


The Gift

by IwillbeReichenbach



Series: I want to go home. [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anger Management, Angst, BAMF John, Concussions, Finally Some Comfort, Happily Ever After, Hurt, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Hurt/Comfort, John Watson has anger issues, John to the Rescue, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, POV John Watson, POV Multiple, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Season/Series 04, Questioning Sexuality, Rape Aftermath, Sherlock Whump, Sickfic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 26
Words: 35,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IwillbeReichenbach/pseuds/IwillbeReichenbach
Summary: In the years after the events at Sherrinford Sherlock continues to battle the demons of his past, especially those given to him in a cold Serbian cell. When Sherlock puts his life on the line to catch a suspect will John be there to help him through?  Will it bring them closer together or has the damage of the past driven them too far apart?This is a gift to my wonderful beta Sandrina.  Without her tireless help this whole series of tales would be a mess of embarrassing typos, poor spelling and terrible grammar.  More importantly through, without her inspiration this part of the story would never have been written.  Not being one for happy endings myself, if i was left to my own devices this would never have been written.  It is spawned from her suggestions and I just hope that I have done them justice.This work is complete and will be updated about once a week.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: I want to go home. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625116
Comments: 354
Kudos: 377





	1. The Case.  Sherlock Holmes.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrina/gifts).



It is late; well after dark when I come up the stairs. The trips to Sherrinford always take up most of the day and they are always draining. The familiar sight of John sitting in front of the fire with a newspaper on his lap greets me as I enter the living room and it makes me yearn for the old days when John still lived here, and this was an everyday sight. 

I wonder why John is here, not that I mind; it is always nice to have him around for a visit. Rosie must still be at home with one of John’s team of babysitters, it is well and truly too quiet, and it is well past her bedtime. Shame really, I could have done with some time playing with her or reading her a book.

“Listen to this, you made the headline. Sherlock Holmes joins the hunt for London’s Most Wanted.” John reads aloud from the paper the moment he notices me enter. “Controversial Consulting Detective, Mister Sherlock Holmes was yesterday confirmed to be working in conjunction with long-time colleague Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade of New Scotland Yard on the Ambush Murders. The investigative team have so far failed to find any solid leads on the identity of the person responsible for the series of violent home invasions in and around central London. The murderer in these incidents takes considerable amounts of small valuables. London residents are being warned to keep valuables out of sight and to lock them up where possible.” 

I sit down across from John and take my violin out of its case as John reads the article. Nothing in it is at all surprising. Typically, the press had done a bland job of reporting all the basic information in a way that will sell papers and whip the public into indignant rage and horrible fear, all while telling them absolutely nothing of use. The part that they glaringly omit is that the criminal breaks into the homes while the residents are out and hides in wait for them to go to sleep before he attacks them. He terrorises his victims before murdering them, subduing them with blunt force trauma to the head before tying them up and torturing them. They also have not mentioned that he sexually assaults most of the victims with an unknown weapon both before and after they are deceased. The burglaries are a distraction. They are clearly not his motivation. All this is information that has been withheld from the press. As was my continued involvement; I had been on the case since the beginning. I had decided to leak my involvement to the press yesterday. 

“It is hoped that the addition of the consultant, who was presumed dead between the years of 2012 and 2014 after sensationally faking his own death, will assist the police force in tracking down the person or persons responsible for the three home invasions over the past year and a half that have left seven people dead and one seriously injured.”

“Yes, John but do they say anything interesting?” I ask over his reading. I pluck at the violin strings absently. This feels like old times. 

“Hang on, you need to hear this.” He says, before reading on. “A source close to Holmes claims that he has already made progress on the case, a surprising revelation as Holmes has not been seen outside of his Baker Street residence since agreeing to take on the case yesterday.” 

“Damn it.” I curse loudly. Publishing my address is part of the plan, but John doesn’t need to know that. “Why do they do that?”

“I know. I’ll ring them and remind them about the injunction against publishing your address.” 

“Don’t worry. It’s too late now. I’m not that hard to look up anyway, should someone want to visit.”

“I know but it is practically an invitation when they print it like that.” John says with more than a hint of frustration.

“You need to stay away while this works itself out.” I say flatly. “Don’t bring Rosie here either. Or even better go and stay with Sholto. His place is as private as they come. There is always the chance that they will connect you with me. It has happened too many times.”

“That’s not necessary.” John begins. “In fact, it should be the other way round, you should not be staying here alone.”

“Yes, yes, it is necessary. I know you claim you can look after yourself but… Rosie. I won’t have her put at risk. He has killed two kids already.”

“He probably won’t come here, Sherlock.” John says, as he contemplates it. “He never targets apartments, only homes and people with much more money.”

“I have plenty of money, thank you.” I say indignantly.

“Yeah, ok, but look around.” He says looking around theatrically. “Not exactly the Shangri-La, is it? Hardly the place to stage a burglary.”

“Well no,” I admit, “but we all know that this isn’t about the thefts, and, more importantly, if he thinks that I am after him, he might come here.” 

“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” He is angry now that he has realised. “You rang the papers, you are using yourself as bait to catch him, aren’t you?”

“Well, it’s not like we had any leads; he is a ghost. A year and a half and even I have nothing to go on.” 

“Bloody Hell, Sherlock. This is ridiculous. You need to tell me when you do this kind of thing.”

“I’m telling you now.” I roll my eyes. “I was going to ring you when I got home, warn you to stay away. I was planning to be home earlier, the flight got delayed. Terrible weather.”

“Why did you go there again? And with all this happening?” John asks. He is exasperated, he doesn’t like it that I still see Eurus. He is still angry about the trick she played on him and about what happened when we went to Sherrinford. 

“I thought that she might be able to suggest something.” 

“She doesn’t even talk, Sherlock. What’s the bloody point?”

“I needed to talk it out.” 

“I thought that was my job.” He is standing now, the newspaper fluttering to the floor. He is angry because he feels left out. I look up at him from my chair. I realise that I have hurt him, but I don’t know a way back from here.

“I’ll be fine here tonight. I’m not going to sleep anyway. I have some composing to do.” I know it sounds like a dismissal. John does too. He leaves without a word. I hear the front door slam. I hear him swear loudly from the street.


	2. The Wait.  Sherlock Holmes.

For three nights I lay in bed waiting for him to come. It is the same each night. I make sure the lights are off and the drapes are drawn and that I am tucked up in bed like all the good boring people of London. I want to get up and tinker with the experiment in the kitchen. I don’t really need to do anything to keep the crystals growing. I’m just bored with waiting, but I know if he is going to come after me, it has to look convincing, so I lay in bed waiting, with boredom grating against my nerves. 

I have sent Mrs Hudson away. I gave her a few nights at a nice little place by the beach. Somehow the apartment seems to be quieter than normal, too silent, but I couldn’t stand the risk of having her here. 

By day, I search for him. Circling like a shark, getting closer, homing in on his vibrations. But always missing. There is something I’m not understanding. I know that he is between 186 centimetres and 197 centimetres tall, over 90 kilograms and has a size 12 shoe. He most likely lives within the confines of London Orbital Motorway or just outside and that he works in a profession that requires a lot of driving. Courier, taxi driver or something. 

It should be enough to find him. I have found plenty of them with less. 

I had been with Lestrade all day and we visited seemingly every taxi company in Greater London. None of the employees had schedules that matched up with his attacks. 

Tomorrow we will check retail companies with delivery drivers. Tedious leg work. The day after it will be fast food delivery drivers and the day after it will be couriers and then truck drivers and patient transport and any other damn thing we can think of. 

It has gone on too long. It is getting harder to look at the victims. I have never struggled with that in the past but now, these ones, they are getting to me. The victims of the crimes I investigate have always just been clues, problems to solve. These ones are different; I know their brand of pain. I know their brand of anguish. I know their brand of fear and I don’t want to look at it anymore. That is why I decided to try the newspapers; to make a subtle suggestion to him that I might be a suitable next victim. I hate it. I fear it. I have danced around it for months and yet here I am waiting for him.

I have hardly slept for days, a week nearly, just dozing occasionally while I wait for him. All his attacks have occurred after one am, he breaks in during the day, hides himself and then attacks once everyone is sound asleep. There is no reason he will break that tradition if he comes here. Plus, I am sure that I will notice the signs of his being here if he was here. He might have been able to hide from them, but he won’t find it so easy if he comes here.

It has been months since the last attack, he must be getting itchy for another, there hasn’t been a spell this long since he started. 

Since he started. That is the key. He wasn’t born fully formed. None of them are. He didn’t start with this. No one just begins with home invasions that are motivated by rape and violence. Sure, he takes some valuables but that is not what he is all about. It is about the killing and the sexual assaults. Something must have come first. That’s the key to this; to finding him. 

I grope for my phone in the dark and hit the speed dial for Lestrade. 

“Hello Sherlock, it’s late, this better be good.” He sounds tired. I glance at the clock. It is after eleven. 

“I need records. Burglaries, fights, assaults, car jackings, all sexual assaults, everything where the violence was exaggerated; was more than necessary to commit the crime. Head injuries especially. I need records from the past two years. He didn’t begin with breaking in and bashing people’s heads in. He started somewhere else. That is how we find him. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.” 

Except I do. It is too close to home. The whole case makes me uncomfortable. The things that happened to me in the shithole military base in Serbia have changed my perspective. Even after all this time I cannot work sexual assault cases objectively.

“That is pretty much the entire database. I cannot get all that to you tonight.” Lestrade tells me. “Come in early tomorrow and we will go through it all. Ok?”

I sigh, he really seems to lack motivation sometimes. “Fine.”

“Are you still insisting on keeping your front door unlocked? I saw another article in the paper today. If he is reading that tripe you are feeding them, you are surely asking for trouble.”

“Yes, best thing that could happen is that he comes here.” I don’t mean it though. Him coming here is not the best thing that could happen. It would be a bloody disaster, but it would be over, and I am desperate for that. A year and a half of thinking about this has worn on me.

“You’re a bloody mad man. You are enough to turn me grey. I’ll have a unit swing by from time to time. Keep your phone close and ring the minute you hear anything, alright?”

“Yes, father.” I mock.

I lay down in the soft blue glow that fills my room. I watch the jellyfish as they drift around their tank in the soft luminescence that keeps me from losing my mind. I do my best to look like I am asleep


	3. The Attack.  Sherlock Holmes

I realise I am dozing off and I’m too bored to care. I doubt there will be any problems tonight; it is after three o’clock. I would know if he is here already and if he does change his MO and come now, I’m a light sleeper. I can thank my experiences in Serbia for that. 

I very rarely dream about what happened there. Even when the wounds were still fresh and I could hardly sleep a wink, it wasn’t dreams that kept me awake. It was just that I was systematically, and cruelly trained to stay awake. It was simply a physical reaction to the act of falling asleep, every time I started to drop off my eyes would leap open and my heart would beat a _tempo di vivace._

__I still jolt awake occasionally. It has gotten better and on nights like tonight drifting off seems to happen without my permission; without me even knowing it. Except, tonight, there are dreams. Nothing I can remember the detail of. Once I stir, they become mere wisps. The idea of a bad trip reminiscent of the concoction I took in 2004, a concoction that I made very specific notes on, to ensure it would never be repeated. Or the suggestion of an unsolvable mystery. A hint of a murdered friend. The creak of a step. An awareness of an awkward conversation. The residual feeling of an inappropriate touch._ _

__Each time I turn over and drift back to sleep, feeling less rested and more troubled._ _

__It takes me a moment to realise that the weight on my back is not part of a bad dream. The realisation comes instantaneously along with the very real pain from a blow to the back of my head. The room is too dim to make out much of anything, especially with my face shoved down into the pillows. It must be him. He has me completely pinned down. I try to get out from under him and from under the tangle of blankets. I cannot even scrabble an arm free to reach for my phone or for the gun I have under the other pillow._ _

__No! It was not supposed to happen like this. I had it all planned. How could I have screwed this up so badly?_ _

__He grabs my right shoulder and halls me over onto my back. I am still tangled beneath the blankets. Pain explodes in my shoulder and streaks down my left arm as my arm is wrenched behind my back. I know, from experience, what an anterior dislocation of the humerus feels like. It feels exactly like this._ _

__Still on top of me, he pushes down on my throat with both hands. The sheet is under his hands and I am trapped beneath it and the weight of him straddling my hips. I cannot move from under him. My good arm is trapped. Kicking and clawing are having little effect._ _

__The look of intense rage is visible in his eyes, even in the near darkness. Those eyes are boring into mine as I am running out of air. My chest feels tighter and tighter. I continue to kick out, but it has no impact on the man above me. He swings his arm back again to hit me. I see the weapon, but I am powerless to move out of its arc. The force of it crashing into my skull makes my vision swim. The pain is consuming; I forget about my shoulder._ _

__I can’t make out what the weapon is, but it is long and thin and very solid. I have a sick feeling that whatever it is, it is the weapon is what he rapes them with. I need to get out of here. I cannot let this happen. My ears are pounding with the sound of rushing blood. I am kicking but there is nothing to connect with._ _

__“John.” I gasp out with the last of my breath, before I can even realise that I have told him to stay away. That he isn’t here._ _

__Another forceful hit crunches into my skull. My vision blurs for a second time. The fight is starting to go out of me but the panic I feel isn’t dissipating. Just rising every moment. As are his chances of winning this fight._ _

__I know what will happen once I’m overpowered, or unconscious, or dead and I can’t handle that. Not again. Not after I have worked so hard to feel relatively normal. He rocks his hips against mine and I want to throw up._ _

__The air ripples and cracks. Heat and moisture explode into my face. His full weight slumps completely atop me. The air is alive with the buzzing stink of copper. I am incredibly confused. My ears are ringing._ _

__I am running on instinct now and my only instinct is to escape. To get out from under him, to get out of here. I cough and gag and gasp as I kick my way free of his mass, from under the choking suffocating blankets. I’m disorientated and blinded and drowning in the muck on my face, in my eyes. I crash to the floor, not even realising that I was close to the edge. Shoulder screaming, ears ringing, gaging on the blood on my face, in my mouth, coughing and trying to spit but too short of breath._ _

__The light comes on, too bright. I cannot see anything. I squint and blink and try to wipe my face clean with my shaking hand. I am still scrambling away; I keep going until I collide with one of the walls. I don’t even know which one it is._ _

__If the light is on there must have been two of them, I realise too slowly. There must be, if someone is near the light switch. There is always something I miss. Maybe that is why I couldn’t find him. I wasn’t looking for a duo. Where is he now? Has he moved?_ _

__I try to cringe against the wall. Useless hiding place but there is nowhere else to go, and the other man is between me and the door. I screw my eyes shut against the light and the coming attack. I give up and cower from what is to come. I have no fight left in me._ _

__“Sherlock, Sherlock. Look at me.” It is John’s voice. I don’t understand. I open my eyes, but I only see a silhouette above me. I reflexively recoil. “Just stay there, you’ll be alright. I’ll get something to clean you up.”_ _

__I wipe at my face again, tying to clear my eyes. I can see a bit more clearly. My eyes are starting to adjust to the light and all I see is red. There is blood everywhere. I am covered in it; it is on the bed and the wall and the roof._ _

__When John returns, he is more than a silhouette. I am still choking and cowering as he wipes my face down. The towel, my towel, comes away covered in blood and bone and brains._ _

__“You shot him.” I say stupidly as the realisation comes to me. “You came in and saw what was happening and you shot him.”_ _

__“You’ll make a great detective one day.” He says calmly as he continues wiping my face and hair._ _

__“What are you doing here?” I ask. Why is everything so confusing?_ _

__“Saving your sorry arse.” John says and his mouth twists into a half smile. “And I wanted to grab my iPad, I left it here the other day.”_ _

__“It’s in the kitchen, I made the pasta sauce you looked up.” I say, borrowing some of the calmness that John naturally brings to a situation. He huffs a laugh out, then another. I’m not even sure what exactly is funny, but it is, and I would laugh too if my bloody head didn’t hurt so much. I cannot supress a shudder._ _

__“It was him. I was right, he came here.” I don’t really understand, but I need to. The room seems to shift and tilt before me and thoughts seem to come too slowly. “The weapon, what is it?_ _

__John looks over to the bed where the dead man lays. “Umm, it looks like a torch. Yeah, it’s a torch. One of those heavy ones that security guards have.”_ _

__“Security guard.” I mutter as it starts to make sense. He must drive between jobs. Long hours at night checking on the premises he is meant to protect. I pause for a moment as my narrow escape starts to sink in. “That’s what he rapes them with, isn’t it?”_ _

__“I suspect so.” John says quietly._ _

__My eyes drift down to my t-shirt; once grey it is now covered in blood and chunks. When I look back up at John, I see the moment that he realises that not all the blood he is cleaning away belongs to the dead man. I see him raise his eyebrows as he notices the blood building up in my hair again, running down my face. I wince as he parts my hair to inspect the damage. I gasp as he presses the clean part of the towel back there firmly._ _

__“You’re hurt.” He tells me the obvious._ _

__“I’m fine.” I say but my slurred voice gives me away._ _

__“He damn near stoved your head in, you are not fine. Are you hurt anywhere else?” He asks, his voice is sober._ _

__“I’m fine.” I try again but the look he gives me says ‘enough of your crap, just tell me.’_ _

__“Just my head… and shoulder, left one, dislocated I think.” I suspect it is obvious which one it is, considering that I am holding my arm to my chest as if my life depends on it._ _

__“Dizzy?” John asks, apparently unconcerned about by arm._ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“Any nausea?”_ _

__“Bit.”_ _

__“You’re squinting, sensitive to the light?”_ _

__“Yes, hurts my eyes.”_ _

__He puts a finger under my chin and lifts my head a bit. “Is your neck sore, it is pretty bruised already?”_ _

__I shake my head and regret the movement that makes it feel like there are a pair of Baoding Balls rattling around in there. I close my eyes against the pain inside my head and I hope that the room will stop tilting soon._ _

__It doesn’t._ _

__“Tired.” I say, wondering where my inhibitions have gone. I wouldn’t normally admit that._ _

__“No sleeping, not just yet.” John says but he notices that I’m swaying. Even with the support of the wall behind me, I cannot keep myself steady. “Alright then. I’ve got you. Lay down, before you fall.”_ _

__He eases me to the ground slowly, until I am laying on my side right side. I try to support my useless left arm as best I can._ _

__Through a blanket of pain, I can hear him call 999 and asks for an ambulance. He calls Lestrade too, but his voice sounds far off, and I can’t concentrate on the words._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Direct me to your favourite angsty stories, pretty please, it will be a balm for my bad day.


	4. Rescue - John Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for a shift in perspective. It is John's turn to tell the story for a while. 
> 
> Perspective will shift back a forth between Sherlock and John. I'll always let you know who in the chapter title.

“John?” 

“Greg, hi. Sorry, I know its late, um early.” I say into the phone. “We are going to need you at Baker Street.”

“Now?” Asks Greg’s weary and exasperated voice, the phone must have woken him up. “I expect this from Sherlock, but really John, it’s half four?”

“Yeah, I know, but we need you right now. Bring the cavalry. He came here. The Ambush Murderer. I killed him. Sherlock is hurt. An ambulance is on the way.” My voice is steady, but I know the news I am delivering is shocking. 

“Shit,” I hear rustling down the phone, evidence he is on the move, “I’m on my way.”

He hangs up without another word. I turn my full attention back to Sherlock. His eyes have started to drift shut again; he doesn’t look at all well. His colour is terrible. I take his vitals again. Nothing is too far outside the norm, but he is deteriorating. Just minutes ago, he was sitting up and japing about where I had put my iPad and now, he is struggling to stay conscious. He has even stopped supporting his injured arm, and he is clearly in a lot of pain. 

“Sherlock. Open your eyes.” I say loudly. He ignores me. I am certain he has heard. “I need you, for once in your life, to follow my instructions for just a minute. Open your eyes”

He sighs heavily but blinks his eyes open. They don’t focus and fall shut a few moments later. 

“Good,” I say, hoping to encourage him. “Now, what day is it?”

“Who cares?” He mumbles, and it occurs to me that even without a head injury he might not actually know. It’s not the kind of thing he keeps track of. 

“I do, I’m trying to assess how hard you got smacked in the head. Be a good sport and play along.” 

“I’m fine, jus’ tired,” he pauses, then continues a bit uncertain, “it’s… Tuesday.”

“Close enough. It’s Wednesday morning now.”

“Whatever.” 

I roll my eyes, knowing that he isn’t looking at me. 

“Squeeze my hand.” I tell him, putting my free hand, the one not holding the towel to his bleeding scalp, against his clammy palm. It takes him a few moments for him to rally his energy and focus toward the task, but he manages a feeble grip. “Ok, you can let go now.” 

But he doesn’t. He would never admit it, but I think it comforts him to have me here while he is feeling so dreadful.

I hear footsteps on the stairs. Greg couldn’t have got here that quickly so it must be the ambulance crew. I call out loudly to let them know where we are. 

Two EMTs enter a few moments later. I turn to greet them and see their faces register the horror show that is Sherlock’s bedroom. They both struggle to tear their eyes away from the dead man on the bed. One fails completely; I suspect he might be relatively new to the job. At least new enough that he stands staring at the hole in the back of the man’s head. It’s a shame he can’t see the front of his head from where he is standing. That would really give him an education. 

The other EMT, a woman, is clearly the more experienced of the two. She looks over to where Sherlock is slumped on the ground just past the end of the bed. She snaps her fingers twice before her partner follows her over to us. I immediately recognise her as someone who has seen some shit in her life. It is her that I direct the handover to. 

“Male, 42, assaulted by this guy,” I gesture towards the bed with my chin, “multiple bleeding head wounds, he was struck repeatedly with the torch. Declining GCS. Initial presentation of 15 declined to 13 within a short period of time. Pupils appear equal, I don’t have light to check reaction, or a blood pressure cuff or bloody anything. Heart rate is 120, respiratory rate of 35. Suspected dislocated shoulder.” 

I step back to let them work as I talk. Sherlock moans as I take my hand out of his grip. 

“The ambulance is here. These guys will look after you now.” I tell him.

“You a nurse or something?” The young one asks me. His naivety is somehow endearing, and I am almost embarrassed as I tell him that I am a doctor. 

“What’s his name?” The woman asks. 

“Sherlock Holmes.” 

“Oh, like the detective.” The younger one says.

“Exactly like that.” I say dryly. I see the moment he realises, wide eyed, that the person he is about to cart off to hospital is the bloke he had read about in the papers. 

They go through to process of initial assessment, trying to get Sherlock to respond to them. I am concerned to see his consciousness slipping further. He still responds but he is increasingly confused and combative, trying to clumsily knock their hands away as they try to fit an oxygen mask and administer pain relief. 

“Sherlock,” the woman asks, “have you ever dislocated your shoulder before?”

I don’t know why she is bothering really; they haven’t got much in the way of definitive answers from him.

“No history of…” I begin.

“Yes.” Comes a clear answer from Sherlock. His voice is low, but the answer is clear.

“When was that? She asks.

“Late two thousand thirteen.” Sherlock replies.

“Does this feel the same?” She asks in a gentle voice. 

“Exactly the s...” his statement trails off. “Hurts.”

“Ok, we will get it sorted out real soon.” 

As they talk, I am doing the mental calculations. 2013, late 2013, that was when he was… dead. Oh. How did I not know that had happened? It must have been shortly before he came home in January. Why did he never mention it?

Greg steps in the door, saving me from thinking about it further. He looks rumpled as he surveys the room with tired eyes. 

“Jesus Christ, John.” He says under his breath. “What did you shoot him with, a bloody canon?”

I pick up my sidearm from the bedside table and hand it to Greg grip first. He takes it with a shake of his head. He places it in an evidence bag. It is still warm enough to singe the thin plastic. 

“How is he?” He asks nodding towards Sherlock. He looks understandably worried. 

“Nasty head injury.”

“All that blood his?” He looks a bit pale as he asks.

“No, most of it is the perps.”

“Thank God for that.” Greg says, still sounding concerned. “Will he be alright?

“I don’t know.” I say honestly. “Too soon to tell.”

It is the first time that I have considered anything beyond the next few moments. 

It scares the hell out of me.


	5. The Confusion.  Sherlock Holmes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter might make a little more sense if you have read Home, however you are Sherlockians, you are the clever people, I am confident you will be fine either way.

Oh, it hurts. Shoulder throbbing, tearing. I try not to think about it, it makes me feel sick. Head hurts. Light too bright. Can’t keep my eyes open. Talking. Can’t focus on the words. Too many people. 

Copper. Blood. Smell makes me nauseous. I’m not usually bothered by it. Why now?

Another wave of pain. Someone touching my arm. I try to pull away. They are strong. Restraining hands holds me. Familiar scratch on my hand. Intravenous. Oh.

No, I’m clean. Worked at it. What are they giving me? I hope it is nice. No, damn it.

I try to tell them no, but it comes out in a jumble that not even I understand. The pain takes on a new quality. Still there but more distant and abstract. Like looking at a familiar landscape, but from an aeroplane.

I can’t keep track of how many there are. Three, four maybe. They keep jostling me. Touching me. I try to push them away. Too weak. Can’t keep my eyes open. I try. Can’t focus. Eyelids too heavy.

Moving. Rolling movement. Strapped down. Moving but can’t move. Scared. Of what? Where are they taking me? Where is John? Dizzy. Spinning. I wish they’d stop.

More talking. Soothing voice. I don’t trust it.

Stillness. But still spinning. Doors slamming. Noise reverberates through my skull. Mouth dry. Throat feels tight.

More movement. Different this time. Vehicle. God. They are taking me somewhere else. This is bad. This is very bad, but I can’t maintain the panic. Exhaustion pulls me under.

Awareness again. Clarity. Ambulance. Oh good. That means hospital. Maybe they can fix this. I can hear Johns voice. He will make it alright. He usually does, in the end. He takes my hand and tells me to be still, tells me that I am ok. I’m not sure whether to believe him.

Bright lights in my eyes. Some cruel bastard holding my eyelids open. Hands shoving at me. Moving me. Taking my clothing. What do they want from me? Why are they hurting me? Why wont they leave me alone?

They wake me up. Questions. They are asking questions. Questions aren’t safe. I don’t answer. I don’t do as they say. I ignore them, hoping they will go away. Hurts so much. I hope I can resist them.

“John? John?” 

I recognise the irresistible draw of narcotic oblivion.

More questions. I hate them. It’s just like before. Asking my name. Hurting me when I don’t tell them. Hurting me when I don’t follow their instructions.

I can’t though, it is too dangerous to answer. I know what it will cost. Not just my life but Mrs. Hudson’s and Lestrade’s and poor John’s lives too. 

John. Where are you?

Light is so bright. I try to cover my face. The skin on my had pulls. Catheter. That’s how they keep drugging me. I reach to take it out, but my left arm won’t move. I push the blankets away, wondering if that is what has my arm trapped. I don’t want them near my neck. Or over my arms. 

Someone grabs my wrist. I try to fight. I see them inject more drugs. I fight that too. I’m not allowed to sleep. I know that much. I force my eyes open. Bad things happen if you sleep. I am losing the fight. I clench my teeth. Expecting the shattered molar to provide enough stimulation to keep me awake for a few more moments, but there is no pain there. 

Odd.

Why? 

I lose the battle with sleep.

They wake me again. More questions. More lights in my eyes. More people. More pain. More fear. More drugs. 

“John. I need you this time. I need you to get me out of this.” I don’t know if I say it out loud. I want to. I want to scream for him. 

I think I hear John’s voice. I know I do. But it can't be him. He can’t be here. If he was, he would never let them do _this _to me.__


	6. British Government. John Watson

“John, I was wondering when you would call. The red flag for his admission notice came in six and a half hours ago.” Mycroft answers his phone with the usual sneer in his voice. “How is my dear brother?”

“You could have called me, you know?” He exasperates me to no end. 

“I knew you would have it all under control. You do have it under control, don’t you?” The first hint of worry creeps into his voice. 

“No.” I admit bluntly. I hope to shake his nice calm controlled world, just for a moment. “He has a head injury. On paper it doesn’t look too serious, all the scans look good, but he is confused and disorientated. He is refusing to follow instructions. He gets agitated every time they try to assess him.”

“People with head injuries can be quite combative, he hates being poked and prodded at the best of times.” Great. Now Mycroft is a medical expert as well as being an insufferable snob.

“This is different, Mycroft. He is scared. Irrational. I am worried he will hurt himself. They are talking about putting him in restraints.”

“No,” he snaps, there is a hint of panic in his voice, “don’t let that happen. I am on my way.”

I stare at my phone. He hung up. Just like that, he hung up. 

I go slowly back down the corridor to Sherlock’s cubicle. He is waiting for a room to become available and until then we are stuck in a holding pattern in the emergency department. 

He is sleeping, the sedation from his last outburst forcing him to rest, but it is obvious that he is uncomfortable. His brow is furrowed and from time to time he makes a small noise that could only be described as a whimper. 

His vitals are stable and normal. There is no elevation in his heart rate that would indicate that he is still in a great deal of pain. The discomfort seems to be mostly mental. To be honest that worries me more than the physical problems. Those I understand, those I know how to fix.

He stirs pushing the blankets away and mumbles my name. 

“Right here, Sherlock. How are you feeling?” I ask him, not really expecting an answer. I don’t get one. I wait until he settles and pull the blankets back up a little. His temperature is a little low, but he keeps pushing the blankets away.

Mycroft arrives sooner than I would have thought possible, and I wonder, not for the first time, how far his abilities extend. He nods at me and waves me back into the bedside chair I have commandeered. I go back to reading the newspaper that I found in the cafeteria, trying to give Mycroft some privacy as he goes to Sherlock’s side. I can’t help myself, I have to peek up over the pages. I catch a glimpse of softness in Mycroft’s features for just a moment before I refocus on the paper. I smile behind the paper shield. It is nice to see those rare moments between the two rivals. It only takes one of them to be unconscious.

I didn’t have time to appreciate the moment for too long though. Doctor Pawson enters again with a smiling hello to each of us. 

He introduces himself to Mycroft, explains the basics of the assessment that they have been trying to do. “I will ask him to open his eyes, do a few simple motor tasks and answer some very basic questions. He has become very agitated each time we do this, and it has meant that we have had to sedate him. I want to break the cycle of sedation, but we need to be able to monitor him without the agitation.”

“He rarely makes things easy.” Mycroft says.

The poor doctor doesn’t know whether Mycroft is being serious or not, so he laughs politely and after a glance at me, which I can only answer with a raised eyebrow. 

He turns to Sherlock. He is professional and calm as he introduces himself to Sherlock again. “Hi there.” He says touching Sherlock on his right forearm to get his attention. I’m Doctor Pawson, I’m one of the doctors looking after you. Can you open your eyes?”

Sherlock doesn’t move. If anything, he is more still, as if he has paused to wait for something.

“I need you to open your eyes for me.” Doctor Pawson says loudly. Still there is no response. He rubs Sherlock’s forearm, trying to get his attention. He waits for a moment and then moves onto applying increasing pressure to the nail of his right thumb. Sherlock jerks his hand away but does not open his eyes. 

“Open your eyes for me.” Again, he squeezes his thumb nail, this time holding Sherlock’s wrist gently to prevent him from pulling his hand away. He squirms trying to get his arm free. Sherlock mumbles something. It sounds a bit like go away or maybe no way. It’s hard to tell.

The doctor changes tactics. “Can you tell me your name?” 

“No, please no.” Sherlock says, his face contorting as he speaks. This has been the routine. Since they put him under to reduce the dislocated shoulder, we haven’t had a moment’s clarity from him. Before that he was confused and irritable, but since then he has been anxious as well.

“Come on, tell me what your name is?” The doctor says more firmly at the same time he leans and uses a trapezius squeeze. Standard practice to get a patient’s attention. It is such a simple act, not truly painful, just a way to cause a little discomfort, enough to get a simple reaction but Sherlock’s reaction is not simple at all. His eyes shoot open and look wildly around. He is trying to push himself further up the bed, flailing and kicking, pushing the blankets away. His left arm moves weakly but he is still moving it far more than he should considering that the joint was reduced only a few hours before. 

“No, no, no. Leave me alone. Don’t hurt me. I’ve already told you everything.” Sherlock’s voice sounds desperate. 

“Stop this now.” Mycroft intervenes. “Doctor Pawson, a word with you, outside, now.” 

I am stunned at Mycroft’s outburst. I watch Mycroft walk out into the hall, leaving no question that Doctor Pawson should follow. I wonder what it is that he has to say that he wants to hide from me, but I don’t have time to really mull it over. Sherlock is still visibly upset. I go to his side. I tell him he will be ok, take his hand and talk nonsense to him until he calms down a little. I tell him to breathe slowly and thankfully, he listens. He seems to recognise my voice. 

By the time Mycroft comes back, Sherlock is more settled. He is curled up on his side with his eyes crinkled shut. He won’t allow me to pull the blanket back over him properly, but it is covering him to the waist at least. I’ll try to get the heating turned up a bit.

“What the hell was that about?” I ask. The only way to handle Mycroft is point blank and even that doesn’t work most of the time.

“We need to find a new way to do the assessment. No pain, no personal questions, definitely don’t ask his name.” 

“Ok, I’ll bite. Why?”

“He is going to hate me for telling you this.” Mycroft pauses for a few seconds as if he is still making up his mind. Or trying to find the right words. Neither is characteristic of him. His speech is proceeded by a small shrug, as if he has reconciled the anger that Sherlock will bring down upon him. “Sherlock was once subjected to questioning under duress, I suspect that this is bringing back some unhappy memories.” 

“He was interrogated?” I clarify. Something in my stomach twists violently at the thought.

“He was tortured.”


	7. Intervention.  John Watson

“Explain exactly what happened last night.” Mycroft instructs me when I stop swearing. He doesn’t give me a chance to ask any questions and going by the look he gives me, I suspect he will decline to answer them anyway.

“I don’t know exactly. I went there to grab my iPad and heard a commotion. I went into Sherlock’s room and this guy was sitting on him and throttling him. He was trying to bash his head in with one of those heavy security torches.” I suddenly feel shaken by the whole ordeal. 

“Where were they?” Mycroft asks.

“On the bed. He had Sherlock pinned down with the sheet up at his throat.”

“And what did you do?” Mycroft prompts.

“I shot him in the back of the head. Sherlock had almost stopped struggling; he was running out of time.” I rub my eyes with both palms, exhaustion is catching up with me. 

“Thank you, John.” He says with a sincerity that is unusual to him. “You have helped me to understand what is going on here?”

“Oh good,” I say a bit sarcastically, “do you think you could explain it a bit then?” 

Of course, he asks a question rather than giving an explanation. “Is Sherlock usually combative, under normal circumstances?” 

“No, he is usually… gentle.” I am a bit surprised by the truth of my own answer; I have never considered Sherlock as gentle until the words were out of my mouth. 

“Exactly. Unless?”

“Unless he is threatened.” I wish Mycroft would stop with the questions.

“Ergo?” 

I consider for a moment, trying to work out what Mycroft is driving at. Then I get it. I understand why Sherlock is reacting so badly to the situation. “He feels threatened.” 

“Good to see you’re keeping up John. We need to take a different approach. Explain the test to me.” 

“It is a standard Glasgow Coma Scale. There is a basic scale for eye response, motor response and verbal response. Each is marked, depending on the level of response. Basically, all he needs to do is stay calm long enough for the doctors to assess whether and how well he can follow the basic instructions. At the moment it is impossible to tell whether the problem is neurological.”

“Let’s assume that he doesn’t have a serious head injury for a moment. What would the ideal response look like?”

“Open his eyes spontaneously or at lease on command, answering simple questions like what day of the week it is, and perform a simple motor task such as squeezing a hand. 

“Ok. Is it possible for me to run through it with him? You or Doctor Pawson can score him.” 

“I don’t see why not.” 

I organise for Dr. Pawson to come back and watch whatever it is that Mycroft has in mind. It is only a short wait until the doctor is back in the room. 

Mycroft leans over Sherlock, he pulls the collar of the hospital gown away from this bruised throat. Then he makes sure that none of the iv lines are tangled or lay across Sherlock’s arms. He slips the sling off Sherlock left arm and folds the blankets down until they are low on his hips. 

When he is happy with the arrangement he starts talking. I expect him to lower his voice. To talk in a soft tone, the way most people do in hospital settings, but he sounds just as he normally does. 

“Brother mine. It’s Mycroft. You are in the hospital. You are going to be just fine. You really should look at this though. It’s the most singular piece of anatomy I have ever seen.” He has a photo on the screen of his phone. I don’t see it, but I can only imagine how strange it must be to gain that level of the Holmes’ attention. “It has been newly documented out of North Korea. Very hush hush.” 

Sherlock, predictability, is not able to resist. He’s eyelids flutter a few times, then he blinks as if to clear his eyes. Finally, he squints at the phone that Mycroft holds close to his face. He can’t keep his eyes on it for more than a moment before his eyelids fall closed again. 

He mumbled something. I think it might have been. “Show me later.” 

Mycroft looks at me and I nod for him to move on. 

“Sherlock, John and I are having a little bet. I think that Peter Sutcliffe was born in 1942 but John is absolutely sure it was 1948. Can you clear it up for us?”

“Both wrong. Was second June ‘46.” He says in a husky voice. I wonder how damaged his throat is. 

“Ahh, well, you were closer, John. You win.” 

I quickly Google the date of birth of the Yorkshire Ripper, I very much doubt Sherlock is wrong, but it is still some relief when Wikipedia tells me that he is bang on with his information. 

Mycroft continues. He manages to sound almost conversational. “Who was the first victim that died?” 

“Wilma McCann.” Sherlock answers without a pause.

“Yes. Sherlock.” Mycroft says, in a relieved voice. “How many times was she stabbed?”

“Fifteen.” Sherlock says. He voice is a little clearer now.

“Can you point to where they were?” 

“Is this really important?” Sherlock asks. 

“Yes, brother mine, it is for the bet.”

Sherlock’s right hand moves slowly. He points multiple points on his own neck chest and abdomen. His fingers catch on the heart rate monitor cables and Mycroft moves swiftly to untangle him. 

“Thank you, Sherlock. Rest a while.” 

He mumbles something that sounds like a bit like piss off.

Mycroft leaves the room and Dr. Pawson and I follow him. Pausing outside Sherlock’s room, down the hall far enough to be out of earshot both Dr. Pawson and I agree that Sherlock’s agitation has more to do with the traditional style of questioning and the sedation than the head injury. It makes sense as all the other findings indicate that the head injury is not a serious one. It is agreed that we will continue with creative questions until the sedation fully wears off and see how Sherlock is coping then. 

Doctor Pawson leaves us to check on one of his other patients. Once we are alone in the hallway Mycroft gives me a look that is simultaneously questioning and smug. 

“That was bloody amazing.” I tell him. Even after all this time; the creativity of the Holmes brothers is startling. I kick myself for not thinking of a better way to assess Sherlock. 

“Well, it is hardly the first time I have had to pull him out of a dark place.”

I swallow thickly at the thought of that. I wonder which dark place Mycroft is alluding to.

“John, you can take it from here, I trust?” Mycroft says. “I have a diplomatic situation to take care of.” 

He strides away before I can answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You asked and you received. It won't be a regular thing, but you have all been so jolly nice that I couldn't help myself.
> 
> Now, I've been tinkering about in the background with a bunch of other stories. There must be more than twenty unfinished works in my Sherlock file. To help me get inspired to finish some I thought I'd ask what you want to read next (or at some time down the track)? 
> 
> There is - prequels to this series (what Sherlock got up to on hiatus), Mycroft's perspective on getting Sherlock out of Serbia, a Johncentric military fic, a rewrite of the Marazin stone (with bonus sickfic), a missing scene from HLV, and the origin story for the skull. As well as a whole bunch of random stuff; everything from whump to angst to badly written shagging. 
> 
> or does it all sound rubbish and you really want to read something else. I don't really do prompts, but you never know where inspiration will strike. Inspire me you clever souls. 
> 
> Anyhoo, It is a rare treat to interact with all you strangers on the other side of the internet. I am loving all your beautiful comments. They are my seven percent solution, truly addictive and a great buzz.


	8. The concussion. Sherlock Holmes

The hospital room is dimly lit when I crack my eyes open. I have a splitting headache and my shoulder throbs in sync with my skull. I know that I am in hospital but have no recollection of getting here. I have the vivid memory of feeling panicked. Thoughts of Serbia drift in the periphery, but I know that that was a long time ago. I try to remember what happened; what caused me to be here. Each time I nearly have it, it drifts away like a name forgotten. Almost remembered but alluding you. 

I swallow and it hurts, my neck feels bruised inside and out. 

“Would you like some water?” John asks me. I had not noticed him there by my side, but I am comforted by his presence. 

“Please.” I try to say but my voice cracks like a teenager’s. 

He fiddles with the control panel on the bed and it sits me up. My muscles complain at the movement. He holds a plastic water bottle to my lips; my hand covers his to control the amount of water. 

“Little sips.” He warns me. 

“What happened?” I ask him when I am done drinking. 

“What is the last thing you remember?” He asks back.

I think back. “Talking to Lestrade. He told me it was too late to get the files I wanted. I went to bed. I must have fallen asleep waiting for… Oh.”

“You remember now?” he asks me 

“I do.” It all comes flashing back. “You shot him.”

John looks uncomfortable when I say this, but he nods. 

“How are you feeling?” He is trying to change the subject. “Headache?”

I answer his questions and by the time he is satisfied my eyelids are drooping. I am unbelievably tired. 

“Can we go home?” I ask. 

“Not yet. The doctors want to keep you in overnight to keep an eye on you. You were a bit confused earlier.”

“Well, he did hit me over the head with one of those security torches.” 

John smiles at that. He looks tired too. 

“What time is it?” I ask as I suppress any thoughts about the other intended purposes for the torch. 

“Half seven,” he tells me, then realising I would have no idea which one, he continues. “in the evening.”

“You’ve been here all day.” I don’t know how, but I know it is true. “You should go home and get some rest. Rosie must be missing you.”

He looks reluctant but agrees. I am glad of the privacy. I can feel composure unravelling like a dropped ribbon. I don’t even know why I feel so stressed. 

John promises to come back in the morning. Hesitating at the door as if he means to say something, but he just says goodbye and smiles. 

I do my best to doze but I am woken every half hour by an irritating, well-meaning, rule-following, question-asking nurse. Each time she raps on the door frame the noise reverberates through my head like a slap, and I wake with visons straight out of Serbia. 

Each time I have to choke down fear to tell her that I am 42 years old, and that the chief of police is Stephan Williams, and that it is September 2019. Or some such rubbish. I am suspicious of these questions. They are very specific. Who has worded them up, why are they not asking standard things; like my name and what day of the week it is and who is the sodding prime minister? This has Mycroft written all over it. Or am I being paranoid? 

I wake up and I don’t remember where I am. Why does my head hurt so much? I bring my hands up to cover my eyes; the light from the doorway is too bright. My shoulder screams. I do too. I remind myself that I’m not in Serbia anymore. Mycroft helped me escape. Was that yesterday or the day before? I look for the American man in the Hawaiian shirt. The doctor: the one Mycroft brought along instead of John. What was his name? Doc, how original. I call out for him. He must not be too far away. He has barely left the room since I woke up. 

A nurse comes in. I don’t recognise her, but she knows who I am and she tells me she will get a doctor. 

It isn’t Doc that comes though. I am starting to realise that I must be mistaken. My back doesn’t hurt, and I can remember Mary. That came after Serbia, right? 

My breathing is a bit more controlled by the time the doctor comes in. She is young and has two cats and a girlfriend she doesn’t get to see much because she works too many nights. 

She looks into my eyes with a bright light; I fight down the memory of the sound of fists against flesh that come with the bright spots in my vision. 

She orders another MRI ‘just to be on the safe side.’ 

At least that is something to do. It is better than trying to sleep. As was expected, it shows nothing suspicious, nor any change from the previous scan.

The process is arduous though, I don’t understand why I am so tired. I try to sleep again and now the nurse only wakes me up every hour. When she notices that I can’t sleep, she offers to clean me up a bit. I decline her offer even though I know that there is still blood in my hair. Not just blood either; there are small chunks that I suspect are brain matter. I remember the panic that I felt when the nurse in Montenegro washed my hair; I don’t think I can do that right now. I ask her to leave. 

By the time natural light comes through my window I am exhausted, uncomfortable, and irritable. I don’t know why after all these years the things that happened are back to haunt me. I had dealt with that shit. Buried it. 

Now it is back every time I shut my eyes, every time I hear a noise, every time I try to fall asleep or when I wake up. It’s in every thought. 

I am staring at the tiles I can see through the bathroom door; one of them is crooked. But I am also reliving flashes of unwanted recollections. They replay over and over and over again. Goran with his fist pulled back. Rasha twisting off the skin on my thigh with the pliers. Rimac with his fingers up my arse. Ivan bringing me water and choking on it because it makes me feel like I am drowning. Waking up on the floor to the smell and taste of piss. Zap ramming staples into my chest and arms and hands. Shitting myself after hours and hours of trying not to. Not being able to remember what day it is. The questions again and again and again and the pain that always follows them.

I flinch when John waves his hand in front of my face. How long has he been here? Had he noticed how unhinged I am. I blink at him and for a moment I wonder if he is real. 

“Earth to Sherlock.” He says loudly. He is carrying a duffle bag. My duffle bag. 

“Hi. Did you bring my computer?” I need a distraction.


	9. John Watson. Visitor

He is just staring at the wall when I return. His eyes look so… vacant. 

“Morning, Sherlock.” I call out from the doorway. I don’t want to startle him, not after how agitated he was yesterday and especially not after Mycroft’s revelation. 

I hardly slept thinking about the things that might have happened to him. Sherlock is one of the bravest, stubbornest, most composed people I have ever met. What had he been subjected to that caused him to lose it like that, years later? When had it happened? Why had he never mentioned it? How long was he held for? My mind whirls through all the possible things that could have happened for the hundredth time. All the obvious things come to mind. All the stuff we were told about in the army; food, water, and sleep deprivation. Is it even possible to deprive Sherlock of those things, he doesn’t seem to need them? Did they use stress positions? Did they hood him? He’d hate that, I’m sure. Taking away his ability to _see_ everything. Any form of sensory deprivation would be hateful to him. Or did they beat him? 

They must have.

I’ve seen his skin; the marks that he never mentions. I asked him about it once. He told me he’d had a night with Irene Adler. I had been so surprised by that that I nearly choked on my cuppa and then he changed the subject. I don’t know if I believed it, even back then. Not that they had been together, they might well have been, there was clearly some chemistry between them. What I didn’t truly believe that she had left those marks on him. Now, I am sure he was deflecting. That he clearly did not want to talk about what had really happened. Shit, it must have been bad. He is private by nature, but to outright lie about it shows he really must have been motivation to avoid the subject. 

All night these questions and concerns scrolled through my head and despite the hours I involuntarily committed to it, I have gained not a single answer. All those sleepless hours have just allowed me to collate a list of worries that seem to be hellbent on pointlessly repeating through my brain. 

Reflexively, the questions I cannot ask, start again as I stand, unnoticed, in the doorway. Seeing him bruised and impassive, while I wonder what happened to him, is like a kick in the guts. 

“Hello. Sherlock. I’m back. Did you sleep well?”

I enter the room when I get no reply. I look closely at his face. He is still, his face is pale and motionless, but something flickers behind his eyes. I’m not sure which is worse. When he was agitated, it was like there was something of himself present, at least. Now, despite being in possession of himself, it’s like he is not here at all. 

I wave my hand in front of his face. “Earth to Sherlock.” 

He recoils like he has been struck. Then he just looks at me blinking rapidly. Then his gaze clears, and his gaze scans me, registering that I have a bag for him. 

“Hi. Did you bring my computer?” 

“Nope. No screens, you need to rest. I have a toothbrush and some pyjamas and a change of clothing for when you get discharged.”

“Phone charger, at the very least?” He asks, he looks so utterly forlorn that I confess that it is in there. I plug his phone in, well out of reach, I put yesterday’s newspaper on top of it, in hope that if it is out of his sight, he might forget about it.

“How are you feeling?” I ask as I plonk down heavily in the chair beside him.

“Fine.”

“Elaborate?”

“Tired, sore, miserable, this whole situation is completely nefandous.”

“Sounds like your back to your old self.”

“Shut up.”

“Yep, there he is.” I feel better for the banter though.

He ignores me haughtily for a few moments and I settle deeper into a chair and shake out the morning paper. It is only a few moments before boredom gets the better of him. 

“Can you read it to me?” He asks. “Just the good bits though.”

I turn to the article about his assailant. I know that he will roll his eyes at the headline that pronounces in capital letters – HOLMES SAFE, and I am not disappointed. I carry on with the article anyway, “Consulting Detective Mister Sherlock Holmes was injured in a violent home invasion late last night. Holmes, who has recently been working to solve the Ambush Murders, has been admitted at a prominent London Hospital after receiving head injuries during an incident at his Baker Street address. He is expected to make a full recovery. Another man at the scene is believed to be deceased. New Scotland Yard have declined to comment on the incident, stating that it is part of an ongoing investigation.” 

“Boring. Move on. New crimes. Unsolved ones.” Sherlock demands.

“Ok, ok, give me a sec.” I flick forward to the next page and start reading about a service station hold up. He seems less bothered about what I read after that. After a few articles I shuffle through the paper to find the sports section, more as a joke than anything, I know he hates it when I read that out. When he doesn’t protest to my reading a section on the upcoming Friday night grudge match, I glance up and I’m not surprised to find that he is asleep. I fold the paper quietly and leave it on the edge of his bed, where he can reach it. 

I slip out as quietly as I can. He needs to rest, and I need to get to Greg’s office and give a statement before he has me arrested. 

Giving the statement takes hours. Every detail is poured over time and time again. My back aches from sitting in the same position on the same hard chair. I am buzzing from too much instant coffee and not enough sleep. My eyes sting from the harsh fluorescent lights. 

Eventually the questions come to an end and I am allowed to leave, something I had begun to doubt would ever happen about halfway through the interview. 

I had no qualms about shooting the man who attacked Sherlock and I would do it again tonight if I have to but, Christ, I could do without the subsequent interrogation. 

As Greg walks me the elevator, he tells me “It was a justified shooting, John. Don’t get worried about all the questions, we are just doing our job.”

“I know Greg, it’s fine, really.” 

“We will get it all cleared up, but we are going to need a statement from Sherlock too. When he is well enough, of course.”

“I’ll make sure he comes by in a few days.” 

“Thanks, John. He is lucky you were there. I shudder to think….”

“Me too.” I cut him off, I don’t want to think about it either. “Are you finished at Baker Street? I want to get it cleaned up”

“Yeah, forensics were done there last night.” He reaches into his pocket and takes a business card out of his wallet. He hands it to me. “Give them a call, they are the crowd we use for the messy jobs.”

The card is for Metro Forensic Cleaners. I sigh. I will probably need them. Sherlock’s room had looked like something out of a B grade horror film. I could only be worse now that the blood has dried.

“Good luck.” Greg says grimly as the lift arrives. As I step inside, he adds, “John, just don’t leave the country, alright?”

Jesus, did he really need to say that. I rub my face as the lift takes me down to the lobby, hoping that this all just goes away.

Out in the street again I am glad for fresh air. I dial the number on the card and arrange to meet Linda, the gruff sounding head cleaner, at Baker Street in half an hour. 

I am surprised when she turns up with two other cleaners in tow. A bald man with only two front teeth, who looks like one of Sherlock’s Irregulars and a young guy that looks like a college professor. I had assumed that they would give me a quote and leave, only to return tomorrow if I was very lucky. I had half expected that they would decline the job, leaving me to try to sort it out. I had visions of trying to clean the roof with a mop and bucket. Thankfully, they save me from that task and begin at once. 

I use the spare time I now have, to organise a new mattress, new pillows, and new sheets. Linda is a saint and she cuts the tags off everything and delivers them into the sitting room so as I can order a replica of each item. Sherlock, of course, would want nothing else. 

I am glad for the distractions; They stop me from thinking about everything from the last twenty-four hours. I just want him safely back at home again, but for now and not the first time I am glad that I know Sherlock’s credit card details.


	10. The Overflow.  Sherlock Holmes.

I’m miserable by the time we arrive home. Irritable too; spending the better part of two days in hospital can have that effect. The cab ride had seemed longer than it should have. The cabbie’s radio blaring Bollywood music and the sunlight splintering off the scratched windshield have done nothing for the splitting headache that just will not go away. 

John carries my duffel bag up the steps for me as if I’m an invalid. I’m sure that is the way he will continue to treat me while he stays; like a child. The doctor was reluctant to let me go when I told him I live alone, telling him John was staying a while streamlined my discharge. It is a good thing I like his company. I just hope I can keep it together while he is here.

“I’m going to shower.” I tell him as soon as we are inside. 

“You can’t get your stitches wet.”

“Seriously?” It is half question and half exclamation. 

“Yes, seriously. Don’t wash your hair.”

“There are still chunks in it. It is revolting. I think I can even smell it.” I exaggerate my look of disgust.

“It’s really not that bad.” 

“It really is! How long until I can wash it?” I dread his answer.

“Seven to ten days.” John drops the bag on the coffee table and turns to give me a stern look. 

“Nope. Not happening. I’ll take my chances.” I stare back, challenging him to argue.

John rolls his eyes at me. “I’ll help you wash the bad bits out. Come on.”

He leads me into the kitchen and pulls a chair up to the sink. The legs scrape on the floor and I wince at the sound. 

“Sit down, I will grab your shampoo.”

I sit. The chair will put me at an awkward angle and the back will make it hard for me to lean back over the sink. I turn the chair sideways so I can get a bit closer. 

I have serious trepidation about this, but what can I say? ‘John you can’t wash my hair because I was tortured and now, I’m scared of getting my face wet. Oh, it was, like, over five years ago and I just never bothered to mention it.’ No, better to just keep my mouth shut. I’ve been doing better; I’ve hardly thought about it in ages and I trust John. It will be ok.

John comes back in with the shampoo and a towel. I tip my head back over the sink as best I can. The cupboard above has nothing to hold my attention, but I try to focus on it. 

John turns the spout to the side and runs the water until he has it at the right temperature. The sound of the rushing water echoing around the basin sets my heart racing. He uses a mug to wet my hair, just like he does for Rosie in the bath. He starts on the left side of my head, as far away from the stitches as possible. I tense automatically as the water runs through my hair. I will myself to relax, I will my throat not to not lock up. It takes every effort. 

John is concentrating on the job at hand, so I don’t think he notices my impending panic. God, I hope he doesn’t. I get a reprieve from the stress when he turns the tap off. He opens the shampoo bottle, the little click it makes as it opens causes me to start. 

We both ignore it. 

John takes his time rubbing the shampoo in leaning over me and picking through my hair. I was right, there is still plenty of evidence of being at close range to someone who suffered a close-range ballistic trauma to the head. I try not to think about it and to lose myself in the sensation of his finger on my scalp. It feels quite intimate with John standing so close by my side. I let my eyes close and I sink down in the chair further so that the edge of the bench supports my head. I am almost relaxed by the time he has worked his way through most of my hair. 

I don’t open my eyes when he runs the water back to temperature, I concentrate on breathing slowly. John uses the mug to carefully rinse out the soap.

“You were right, was a mess.” John tells me, his voice sounds hollow as it bounces around the sink. “They really should have washed it for you at the hospital.” 

“The nurses were too busy flirting with you.” I joke, trying to deflect, I don’t want him to know that I told them not to.

“The blonde one was cute.” John laughs a little. I don’t remember the blonde nurse, but I laugh anyway. The absurdity of the situation suddenly getting to me; a grown man getting his hair washed in the kitchen sink like a toddler. That is when the water spills down my face. 

“Shit, sorry.” John says. I hear him but only faintly through my rising panic. My throat feels like it is closing up. I freeze. I hear the shouts of men that are not here. 

John does the only natural thing and the worst possible thing he could have done. He uses the towel to wipe the water from my face. 

My hand shoots out to grab his wrist. The movement is without any forethought or planning. I’m just reacting now. I have him pushed up against the fridge, his arm jammed up behind his back before I know what I am doing. Water drips from my hair and runs down my face. I am choking, then coughing. My shoulder protests, my head feels like it is in a vice.

I pause, immediately aware of my extreme over reaction. John to his credit, just stays where I have put him. I gulp air. A wave of exhaustion sweeps over me. I lean my head forward until it is resting between his shoulder blades. 

“I’m sorry, John.” I manage to mutter against his damp shirt.

Horrified, I step away from John, from the fridge. I lean forward to cough; I gag once before I can pull myself together. 

John is silent. Staring at me. I can feel it. His gaze penetrates my panic. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” I say, although the word sorry is too feeble. I stagger back to sit on the chair, on the edge. My legs feel weak. I grab the towel off the floor and wipe my own face. The water leaves pink spots on the towel.

“What…was that?” John sounds unsure of himself as he asks. 

“I overreacted.” I mumble. 

“Yeah, yeah, you did, a bit.” John says slowly. He is thinking. “But why?”

I can’t look at him. I just keep my eyes on the floor. I know he knows something. I have seen the way he has been looking at me. I don’t know how much he knows. I can’t look at him. I cannot handle the way he looks at me. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to say it. 

John comes closer. Crouches down in front of me. He tilts his head to try to catch my eye. I tell myself to harden up. I sit up a little, look up a little. Breathe a bit deeper. Meet his eye. What I see there gives me the courage to start. 

“Enhanced interrogation techniques were used,” I begin, if I talk about it clinically maybe I can explain, “Water, especially on my face triggers a stress response. The position I was in and the addition of the towel were too…familiar.”

I pause. I am not doing a good job of this. I swallow. It sticks in my throat. 

“Enhanced interrogation techniques.” John says slowly. “That’s the bullshit term the Americans used for the shit that went down at Guantanamo.” 

I nod once. “You get the idea.” 

I see the exact moment realisation dawns on him. 

“The water, they, did they?” He pauses to collect himself. “Waterboarding, is that what they did to you?”

“Obviously.” I try to sound bored, but I don’t think I pull it off.

He wraps his hands around mine. I realise that I am still holding the damp towel. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I can’t.” I shake my head. Dammit, it bloody hurts. 

I expect him to pry, to keep going until we have a row, but he amazes me once again.

“When you’re ready, I’ll listen.” John tells me. “Any time you like. You can say as much or as little as you like, and I will listen.”

“I don’t think I will ever be ready.” 

“That’s ok too.”

He stands up slowly and motions for me to lean back. He reassures me that he will be more careful with the water. 

I take a slow breath and decide to trust him.


	11. The Letter. Sherlock Holmes.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I cannot stop thinking about it. I thought I was past reliving every moment from that hell hole in Serbia, but I’m not. It is all back again with a few additional interruptions. This time, when I dream about being waterboarded it is blood they are pouring over my face. It’s Magnussen that has the stapler and the car battery. It is not Claire’s death I am trying to avenge, but Mary’s. It is John who sits there and watches while they beat me, while Rimac rapes me. 

I hate this god damned brain for all the crazy shit it can cook up. I can’t stay in bed any longer. The new sheets are scratchy, and the mattress doesn’t feel right yet, it all serves as a reminder of what happened here. Of how close I came to being killed or worse yet, raped again. I had told myself, repeatedly; that what happened in Serbia was an isolated event, that nothing like that would ever happen again, could ever happen again. I hinged everything on that notion and now that it came so close to happening again, I am doubting everything I thought I knew. And that scares the hell out of me.

I get up and try to follow the instruction that John left me with when he went to work. I am supposed to stay home and rest, to nap and relax and not look at the computer or my phone too much and behave myself. 

I try, I really do; it’s boring but it’s not even the boredom that gets to me. Whenever it has a chance my mind wonders to places that I really don’t want it to go.

My head hurts too much to read, I can’t focus on the words. I can’t string together enough thoughts to work the cold case I have been tinkering with. I don’t think there is enough to go on anyway. It is one of those cases that is probably destined to go into the old chest that holds all my failures locked up together. 

I get dressed and go out. I don’t really know what draws me to there, but I go to the bank, to the safety deposit box that holds the musty photo album that tells the sick, miserable story of the Rimac family. I have not opened it. Not since the day I sat on the stained carpet in Rimac’s house. When the mailman delivered it to Baker Street straight from the nursing home where Jovan Rimac took his own life, I brought it here to the safety deposit box. I never even took it upstairs. I could not let its presence infect my home. 

Maybe I need to know that it is real, unlike the spacey quality of the dreams and flashbacks. Maybe I need to know he is real and that, and unlike my dreams, he was beatable, and that he really is gone from this world. Maybe I need to remember that his life was hard. Maybe I’m just a masochist. 

I stand at the table and look down at the cover of the book with the cartoon boy and the train. Hesitation warns me. Warns me to walk away, to stop this madness. 

I’m not sure what makes me defy that voice. Perhaps the fear that I will listen to it again in the future, when it tells me to be weak and scared. The two things in this world I do not want to be.

I flip open the cover. I cringe as the spine creaks, but lightning doesn’t shoot from the pages; rocks don’t fall from the sky. The photos look exactly the same as I remember them. It’s almost disappointing how mundane it feels to look down at them.

Maybe that is why I came here. 

I nearly shut the book there and then, but I decide to bask in my success. I flip absently through the pages, hardly glancing at the photos. I know them all anyway. 

I stop were two pages are stuck together. The tacky surfaces turn them into one thick page. I prise them apart gently. Something is stuffed between the pages. A sealed envelope. My heart thumps when I see that it is addressed in shaky writing to Sherlock Holmes. 

‘Well, congratulations.’ I mutter under my breath as I turn the envelope over. “You figured it out.” 

The envelope is light, business sized, smells musty. I pocket it. There is no way in hell I’m opening it here. I have my suspicions about what it holds and none of them are things I want to deal with in public. 

I go to shut the album knowing there will be nothing else inside. I pause. One of the photos is missing. In the space that the envelope took up. It is the one with the deer and the rifle. I shudder but I shake off the feeling as I snap the album shut. 

I go directly home. I have only been gone an hour but Mrs Hudson hovers when I come in the door.

“Where have you been? I was worried about you. I popped in to say hello and you were gone.” She eyes me closely. I’m sick of their scrutiny.

“Just nipped out to the bank.” I brush past her and up the stairs. My head is pounding. The letter feels like a lead weight in my coat pocket. My shoulder is complaining that I went out without the support of the sling. 

“I’ll brink you up some tea.” She offers.

“I’m going to have a bit of a lie down, don’t bother with the tea.” There, that should keep her away a while. I need a moment.

I shut the door behind me. Slip off my coat and my shoes. I take the letter and go to the mantelpiece. I collect my knife and take it to my chair. I turn the envelope over and over in my hand. Cheap generic stationary, cheap blue ballpoint pen, stationary supplied by the nursing home, no doubt. Shaky writing. Closed with spit. Smells musty, like the album. 

They didn’t know it was in there when they sent the album to me. I am sure of that. 

I never requested it. I had asked them to throw everything that could not be donated into the rubbish. I thought that they couldn’t bare to throw it away, but now I wonder if perhaps he wanted me to have it. One last dig at me from beyond the grave.

When I cannot procrastinate any longer, I slip the knife in between the top fold and the shoulder of the envelope and slip the sharp blade along its width. 

I pull the papers out gingerly, as if they are capable of biting me. 

There are two pages both folded thrice. When I open them, the photo falls face down in my lap. The deer photo. It must be. I pick it up and turn it over. I nearly drop it. It is the photo I was expecting, except it has been altered, the face of the boy had been covered over with a newspaper photograph of my face. 

It is long moments before I can drag my eyes away from the photo to read the letter. I place the photo face down on the arm of my chair. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want it to see me.

The letter is written in large shaky handwriting and poor English. It reads:

_Sherlock Holmes  
You thought I would never work it out, didn’t you? You were wrong. You thought I was too stupid. You were wrong again. You thought I could not get any access to the internet. But I did. It didn’t take long to find you. You are practically famous. You and your friend. It makes sense to me now. It wasn’t me you were referring to when you called out to John. It was your blogger. How cute. You make a nice couple. Your pictures is all over the internet. And you walked into my house with no disguise. You idiot._

_But surely you are smart enough to understand this. This is my death note. You left one too, didn’t you, before you jumped? I know about that too._

_I’m done with life. I’m sick of the defiance of my body. I hate waking up here every day knowing that you put me here. It is dirty and food is awful._

_I look at the photo album every day. It is all I have to do. I remember what he did to me every single day. I have remembered every day for my whole life. Now the only thing I have to look at is the photos. You did that. You arsehole._

_You won, I guess, like you always do._

_But I will have the last laugh, because you will remember what I did to you every day. I know what that is like. In a way, my father got you too. That’s why I have included the photo. It’s yours now. He is yours now. Look at it every day and remember. Do that for me and Papa._

_Jovan Rimac_

I sit for a long time, trying to decide how to feel about this letter. 

Slowly, I fold the photo back into the letter and slide the letter back into the envelope. I stand automatically, take the letter to the mantelpiece, and drive my knife through the centre of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for being the ones to leave the kind words, the kudos and for lurking in the shadows. This would not be as much fun without you.


	12. Concerns.  John Watson

As I wait for my taxi to deliver me to Baker Street, I consider the last few days. Each day at work has felt like it had lasted an age. I don’t want to leave Sherlock alone while he is still struggling with the concussion but I had to; Robert has been great, taking on all my urgent patients and rescheduling the others, but he needs a day off. 

I know that the days are dragging because I am worried about Sherlock. This has been hard on him. The concussion has caused him to be in a state of unnatural confusion and that confusion seems to have plagued him with anxiety. I’ve seen him agitated in the past but never for so long. It was usually a fleeting emotion, not a consistent state. 

As much as the injuries have taken their toll and as traumatic as the night-time attack had been, I get the feeling that these are not the sole causes of the distress. Not even the primary cause. Increasingly it seems that they are just the catalyst. 

There have been too many times when I had entered the room to find him staring into space. Not in that mind palace way of his. I know because when he notices me watching him, he becomes self-conscious in ways he never has in the past. He isn’t sleeping well either; I hear him pacing sometimes and I the light from the sitting room invades the staircase beyond my door. He looks exhausted. Two nights ago, I gave in to my instincts and went downstairs; I gave him a lecture on the importance of sleep for post-concussion healing and a Nytol. 

He woke up screaming an hour later. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, but instead of telling me to sod off like I expected him to; he let me sit up with him on the couch. We sat in silence until the shaking died down to intermittent tremors. Eventually, the sleeping pill and the exhaustion caused him to sag down until he fell asleep with his head against my shoulder. I wrapped a blanket around him and let him drool on my shirt until shards of morning light pierced through the drapes neither of us ever bother to close. He woke up suddenly and self-consciously and excused himself to the bathroom.

All in all, I really didn’t want to go into work today. All day I have been distracted. There is nothing special about today, so I’m not sure why it is bothering me so much. I have repeatedly told myself that he is an adult, a very intelligent one at that, and that he will be fine. Mrs Hudson will have checked on him regularly, just like she has been doing every day. Yet, I just cannot shake off the concern.

The concern has only grown further by the time the taxi delivers me to the door. I take the stairs two at a time. 

My concerns prove to have some foundation when I see him. He is in his chair, but he is a picture of absolute dejection. He is bent forward at the waist. Forearms across his thighs. Head bowed. His hair, more unruly than ever for its neglect while the stiches hold his scalp together, is obscuring his face. It is the piece of rubber tubing tied above his left elbow that gives me pause. 

A syringe dangles from his fingertips. 

I am kneeling at his feet before I register moving. My heart is thumping in my chest. 

“Did you...?” I can’t finish the question. “Is there a list?” 

He looks up at me for a second, and then speaks to the floor. “My hands are shaking too much. I can’t, wanted to, but I can’t get a vein.” 

I turn his hand over slowly and gently. I’m aware that his shoulder must still be sore. I see the marks on his arm. Six or eight of them, where he has dug under the skin, trying to get a useful vein. His hand is cold. The tubing has been on for too long. 

“Let’s get this off.” I undo the slip knot and try to massage the circulation back into his arm. He doesn’t respond at all. 

I need him to look at me. I need to see him when I speak. 

I put my palm against his cheek. He leans into it and raises his head at the same time. I have never seen him so dejected. 

“I’m sorry. I just needed a break from all this. Just for a little while.” Sherlock whispers. 

“This is not the right answer.” My voice sounds tight and I stop myself. My instinct is to shout, to shake him, to tell him how stupid this is. To remind him of where this ridiculous habit has led him in the past. But he looks so desperate. I start again. I try to keep my voice as soft as I can. “You can talk to me. Tell me what’s going on? Is this about the other night? There is more to it, isn’t there?” 

“I can’t.” He says, shaking his head. The words seem to stick in this throat. “Not now.”

“When you’re ready, I’ll listen.” I see the tightness around his eyes. He looks so tired. “Do you have a headache again?” 

He nods once. Looks like he regrets the movement. 

“When did you sleep last?” 

His right shoulder lifts in a shrug. 

I take the syringe from between his fingers. To my relief he lets it go without any resistance. I let out a breath as I take it with me to the bathroom. The contents I squirt down the drain, the needle goes into my sharps container. 

I return to him balancing a glass of water, his pain medication, and the sleeping pills I picked up at lunchtime. He needs to rest. I had anticipated the exhaustion and after the debacle the other night with the Nytol, I took it upon myself to fill a prescription for Zolpidem. I’m hoping that is can him enough that he can get a good night’s rest. 

God, I hate seeing him like this.

He is sitting up now with his knees to his chest, staring at the empty fireplace. He doesn’t blink. Just stares with fixed eyes. I hold the mug of water out to him. Still no response. I clear my throat. Nothing. 

“Sherlock.”

Still nothing. When I touch him on the knee, he nearly levitates. I jump too. Water runs down my fingers. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

He just blinks at me.

“Take these. Strong paracetamol for your head and something to help you sleep.” 

Mechanically he takes them, and I sit across from him while he finishes his drink. His hands are shaking. I have never seen him like this before. Never so quiet and introspective. It scares me. 

His eyes are drooping before he can even finish the water. 

“Go to bed. You can hardly keep your eyes open.”

He doesn’t argue. I walk with him, worried that he might fall if he is left alone.


	13. The Second Bedroom.  Sherlock Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heed the tags on this chapter and if you feel that something may be triggering please make safe choices. However, if you have followed this series so far, you should be fine with this one.

I wake up sitting upright and breathing hard. My mind feels fuzzy. I try to remember, what did I take? How much? 

I don’t know. I hate not knowing. Why do I keep forgetting? My mouth feels dry. The blue glow from the jellyfish tank that is usually soothing, just reminds me of the attack now. 

I am startled by a nervous little rapping at my door. I close my eyes for a moment, try to centre myself, before calling out, “What?”

John opens the door slowly and comes in; he is wearing his pyjamas. He hasn’t put on his dressing gown. It’s cold, he must have rushed. I must have yelled out in my sleep. Embarrassing. I don’t remember the dream, not properly, but I know it was about the Nightman. Oh god, I must have called out for John.

“Come on, you can’t stay in here. It’s messing with you.” John’s voice is steady. He is always so calm. How does he do it? I wish I was calm. I can barely remember what that feels like.

I follow John, as if on auto pilot. I assume that he will lead me to the couch again, but he goes out the kitchen door that leads to the landing. Through the fog in my brain I realise that he means for me to sleep in his room. I am too tired, too emotionally drained, to question his wisdom, so I just follow him up the stairs. 

His room looks nothing like the rest of the house, it never has. The furniture is all relics from when he used to live here. Nothing changed when he moved out and it was spared from most of the damage when the patience bomb detonated. The only change is that now there is a fresh coat of paint on the walls to cover the water and smoke damage. Plus, a cot and an armchair have been moved in. Things for Rosie for when they both stay here. It is all simple and modern. He isn’t materialistic. Army life, I guess. Ready to leave it all behind at a moment’s notice. I wonder if he wants to leave; if this is getting to much for him?

The room is silent, absent of Rosie’s snuffling snores. John has been here for nearly a week and I am embarrassed that I don’t even know where Rosie is staying while my life implodes. Perhaps she is downstairs with Mrs Hudson. 

I never come in here, with the exception of the occasional snoop in the early days, just after we moved in here. Stepping through the doorway feels like entering another dimension. It doesn’t feel like part of Baker Street. It doesn’t feel like part of my life. It feels peaceful. 

John pulls back the plain grey covers and when I stand staring at him. He tells me to “get in.” 

I move through the haze that has become my life. He moves to pull the blankets up over me. I stop him with a firm grip on his wrist. I can’t handle being covered up, not past the waist. Not since I couldn’t get free of the blankets. 

John turns to leave. I roll onto my side to watch him go. He flicks off the light switch by the door. Only the light from Rosie’s night light illuminates the room in a soft glow. 

“Good night,” John says.

He is in the doorway when I speak. I don’t know why I start. I don’t know how I make myself start, after weeks and months and years of not wanting to and not knowing how to. It just happens. 

“The light was so bright.” I say. He freezes in place with his back turned and his hand on the doorknob. “It was on all the time. Day and night. They wouldn’t let me sleep or even lie down. I was kept standing up but hunched over so that I was never able to get comfortable.”

My voice sounds flat and hollow. It is as if I am talking about someone else.

“At night one of them… he would sit beside the light. Every time I nodded off, he would shuffle across to me and slap me in the face. I learned not to fall asleep, I learned to snap awake if I started to fade. 

“During the day there were two of them, sometimes others too, but mainly the same two guys. They took turns to ask the questions. Real amateurs, but they knew enough about causing pain. It was easy at first to keep my identity from them. I lied, and I avoided, and I antagonised them. That was stupid.

“It got harder as time went on. I was getting tired, worn down, and they were so persistent. They must have done some research on interrogation techniques; just stuff they could find on the internet probably. They were predictable especially in the beginning; they would just beat me when I refused to tell them what they wanted. Predictable was good, in a way. It was manageable, for a time at least, but the combination of it all, the waterboarding, the sleep deprivation, hardly any food or water, the stress position, the humiliation of being left to shit and piss myself, It wore me down, not that I would have admitted it at the time, not even to myself.

“They got impatient and when they ran out of ideas, they got an expert. He brought in a car battery and some electrical cables. I have never known pain like that. I thought I would die. It was too much. I had to tell them something. Something to make them stop. Just a bit of information. That’s the balance. Tell them enough to stay alive. Not so much that you are no longer valuable. 

“I couldn’t tell them who I was. That would have put you in danger. And Greg and Mrs Hudson. Molly too if they figured that part out. 

“I struggled so hard against the electric shocks that I shattered a molar. I heard my wrist crack. They kept going until I passed out. At least that saved me from telling them something I shouldn’t have.”

I pause because I know what I am about to say will change everything. I know that every time John looks at me, he will know that Rimac put his filthy hands all over me. I know John will refute it, say it doesn’t change anything, but I also know that that can’t be true. I have already changed things, already set wheels into motion that cannot be stopped 

Emotion creeps into my voice for the first time.

“While I was unconscious, that was the first time he raped me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, please don't hate me.


	14. Disclosure.  John Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is a short one to make up for the rotten little cliffhanger I sprung on you. I was just pausing to change perspective.
> 
> And here you were thinking I was going to leave you hanging for a whole week. What kind of a monster do you think I am?
> 
> You'll have to wait for next week for the next chapter though (and it's a doozy). No amount of begging will make it happen sooner. 
> 
> While I'm tapping away here, I'd like to thank the little crew of readers who are supporting this story so strongly. I love your comments and I love that you are here each week. You help make this all the more fun for me. Kudos to you lovelies.

“That was the first time he raped me.” Sherlock said, his voice breaking from the flat monotone that he had held throughout his whole speech.

It is hard to process what he is telling me. I feel like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Like the floor has dropped out from under my feet. I grip the doorknob harder to ground myself. 

“It was the man that kept me awake every night.” Sherlock continues as I go through a massive internal crisis. “I don’t remember it. I wasn’t even conscious of it happening. But I knew when I woke up. 

“The electric shocks had left me confused, something like a concussion. It felt like this. Like I have the past week. I couldn’t remember a lot of the things that happened. I still can’t. Everything felt vague and strange. What I do know is that he was there every night and after that first time, I know he raped me every night. I lost whole days or only remember some moments from others, but I know how humiliating it was; how much it hurt. Do you know what it is like for me to not remember things?” He asks as his voice starts to really hitch now, emotion finally overcoming him. I know he doesn’t want an answer though, so I stay silent and still. 

“To add confusion and doubt to everything else I was subjected to, that was almost too much. That’s the thing; I could handle…can handle what they did to my body. It’s only transport. What gets to me is what it did to my mind.”

He pauses for a few moments and I almost turn around. I want to go to him, but I don’t want to break the spell. I wait, wondering if he will say more. Time stretches on. I should have moved sooner, now I have waited too long. Then, to my relief, he starts speaking again.

“By the time the guy with the car battery came for a second time, I couldn’t take anymore. I was so worn down by it all. I was sleep deprived, injured, hurting all over, dehydrated, starving, I had pneumonia. I was desperate. I was scared.

“I knew something they didn’t; it was my last desperate attempt at a reprieve. I knew who he was, the guy with the car battery. Who he really was. A double agent; I had seen his file on Mycroft’s desk once. It took me a long time to put it together, to remember why he was familiar, too long. I told them. They killed him. Dumped his body somewhere. That’s how Mycroft found me. He is hopeless in the field; you saw what he is like at Sherrinford. I had to do half the work to get us out. Then he expected me to thank him for it later. He was there, undercover, for almost twenty-nine hours before we could escape. He watched them beat me, he chose the tools they would use on me, twice. He knew what was happening at night. He knew from the first glance. He waited, stuck to the plan. He needed to, I know that, but it was my lowest moment. That was the only time I felt truly broken. Knowing that he knew and did nothing.”

His voice had turned bitter and tight as he spoke of his brother’s involvement. When he paused, he took a deep breath. His voice was flat again when he continued.

“That’s it. That’s what happened. That is why I have been such a mess since I got back.”

I am still rooted in place with my back turned to him. The shock of what I had just heard paralyses me. I knew something serious had happened to him. Mycroft had indicated that at the hospital, Sherlock had said as much when I had spilt the water on him, but I had no idea that he was… abused to that extent. I still fear that moving will break the spell. He never talks like this. He is never this candid about anything outside of a case or an experiment. In the silence of the room I summon up the courage to turn towards him. I need to be closer to him, I need to offer him some comfort. I am glad for the darkness of the room that hides the tears that are streaking down my face.


	15. Revelations.  John Watson

Sherlock has hardly moved since he started talking but as I step closer, as I reach out towards him, he recoils. It is the slightest of movements, but it stops me. That small movement is like a stab in the guts. I stand in the no-man’s-land between the door and the bed.

“When was this?” I ask him. My voice shakes. I need to know this; how could I be his closest friend and not be aware of this happening to him?

“While I was away. When you thought I was dead.” God no, why does everything come back to that God-awful time?

“Be more specific.” I prompt him, my shock making me sound stern. 

“Just before I returned. I was in hospital for a while, recovering, then I came back here.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I am gutted that he felt he could not confide in me. I step close to the bed where he lays curled on his side. He looks small.

“You were already struggling to deal with my return. I couldn’t the add to that.” 

“But later? You could have told me later.” 

He sounds frustrated when he replies. “When exactly? When you were trying to cope with your wife’s secrets? Or when I was assigned to a suicide mission? Or when you had a newborn? Or when I got Mary killed? When I drugged myself up to the eyeballs? Or, when my homicidal sister resurfaced to terrorise us? There was never a good time.”

“There were plenty of times.” I say feebly. He is right though; I never gave him time. The tears fall down my face faster, and I wipe them away angrily.

“I didn’t know how. I was embarrassed, ashamed of what happened. Scared of what you would think of me.” He admits. “Who I am, who everyone thinks I am, it is all just because of their perception. I couldn’t bare for that to change.”

“Nothing could change how I think of you.” 

He scoffs. “Even if you knew it was my fault? Because it was my fault that I got caught. I was impatient. I wanted to come home. It was so close to the end. I took too many risks. I put myself in that position.”

“Nothing.” I say with certainty.

“You are a fool. It already has.” He tells me, and his words feel true. 

“I knew something had happened while you were gone, something serious. You were different. Quieter. Less self-confident. Sadder. I was so caught up in my life. I should have asked you, but there was a part of me that really didn’t want to know. I was scared to know what it was.” I am rambling; the words gush out faster than my brain can work. Then I realise. My heart sinks. And a moment ago I didn’t think it could get any lower. “Oh God. I hit you. Oh, no. I’m awful. I was so angry when you turned up at the restaurant. You tried to tell me why and I wouldn’t listen.”

“I know you never bought it, when I said I left for you.” 

I go to speak, but he won’t let me.

“I get it. I was also saving myself, so you were right in a way. I didn’t just leave for you. But I did come back for you. That was the only think that kept me going in there. The thought of coming back here to you.” He pauses and then adds, almost as an afterthought. “To your friendship.”

“I thought you didn’t care.” I tell him, but I realise that I am so wrong. That I have been so wrong for a long, long time 

Sherlock sits up suddenly, he meets my eyes for the first time; he looks so hurt by my words. “Why? Why would you think that?”

I sit down beside him, realising how hurtful my words have been. I try to explain. “I told myself that lie so many times. If you didn’t care, then I didn’t have to either; I wouldn’t have face up to my feelings about you. It was easier to think you just didn’t give a shit.”

Sherlock looks confused for a moment. Then realisation strikes. His eyes go wide.

“Oh…Oh…” Then he pauses again, like he is doubting himself. “What exactly are those feelings?”

I sigh and frown at myself, suddenly more unsure than I have ever been. I am forced to make an admission. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“Good or bad?” He asks, sounding desperately uncertain.

“Good.” I reassure him. 

“Ok. Umm, good. I wasn’t sure, things have been… tense between us for a long time.”

“No, definitely good. I’m just not sure what to do with it.”

“Well, when you work it out, let me know. I’m not good at feelings. You’ll need to… spell it out to me.” 

“You’re not...put off by this.” I don’t even know what this is.

“Nope. I don’t think so.” He smiles slightly, but he also looks slightly confounded.

“What happened to ‘married to your work’?” I ask, feeling a bit lighter. 

“What happened to not being gay?” He asks back with his usual lightning speed. 

I laugh a little. Then realise that it is an entirely inappropriate time to be laughing. That makes me laugh a little more. Thankfully he joins me and doesn’t throw me out of the room. The tension drains from us both a little. 

When we finally compose ourselves again, I realise how late it is.

“You should really try to get some sleep. You must be exhausted.” 

For a few long moments he pauses. I’m not used to the cogs of his brain moving so slowly, it is off putting. His voice is thick with emotion when he speaks. “I don’t want to be alone. Could you stay here, with me?”

For a man who asks for help with every meaningless task in his life - fetch my phone, get me a pen, grab some milk while you’re out, bring home some soil from the corner of Wild and Keeley, can you order dinner, and so on and so on, he never really asks for anything, certainly never for any form of comfort or support. There is no way I could refuse him now. 

“No worries, get comfy, I’ll pull up the chair.” I say as I stand up. 

He grabs my hand and holds me there. 

“Seriously? After all that?” He says almost mockingly, but he takes my hand and stops me from stepping away. “I won’t be able to sleep if you sit there watching me.” 

“What?” I say, I need clarification. “You want me to…? In the bed…? Are you sure?”

“Given you obvious reluctance, I hardly think you’re going to try anything amorous.” 

“Not reluctant, just checking. You know? After everything you have told me tonight, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.” I’m not sure if my denial of reluctance is entirely truthful. 

“Just get in the bed, John?” He says, but there is tension to his voice. I suspect it is caused by uncertainty I am feeling. 

I go to the other side of the bed. The sheets are cool, and it feels foreign to lay on this side of my own bed. I don’t know how to feel about this. Does it mean anything, is it weird, should it feel strange to share a bed with my best friend?

We both lay still and tense, staring at the roof in the dim light provided by Rosie’s night light. 

So much has been said tonight, so much has not been said. Questions swirl in my mind. How long was he held there for? How did he survive that? How did I not know? Are the people who did that to him still out there? I want to ask it all, but the moment had past, and I am too afraid. 

Then there are the other questions that I don’t know the answers to. What is going on between us? Do I love him? In what way? Do I want a relationship with him? Is it even possible? Would he allow it, participate in it?

Sherlock reaches out across the chasm between us and takes my hand. “Stop thinking. I need to sleep.”

Then I realise the one important thing. Right now, none of it matters.


	16. The Waters of Lethe. Sherlock Holmes.

When John wakes me with up a warm hand on my shoulder, he is dressed for work. He has a mug of tea and a packet of pills for me.

“Take these, before your headache gets too bad.” He says to me in a low tone.

I prop myself up long enough to gulp down the tablets and a mouthful of tea.

“Did I keep you up all night?” I ask him as I burrow back into the pillows. He looks tired. I am worried that I disturbed him as I tried to escape more haunting dreams.

“No, you slept well. You needed it. Go back to sleep if you can. I’ll be back here around six. I was thinking of grabbing a curry.” 

I wrinkle my nose. The thought of curry makes my stomach roll.

“Ok. No curry.” He says, much to my appreciation. “What do you feel like?” 

I’m too wrapped in the warm haze of sleep to reply so I just shrug a little.

“Text me later when you decide.” He says. “Drink some water today. Dehydration won’t help your head any.”

I can’t be sure because I am already drifting back to sleep, but I think he presses his lips to my forehead before he leaves.

It is almost lunchtime when I wake again. I am surprised to have slept so long. I feel a bit better for it. 

I make the bed, taking more care than I would if it were my own. Then I shower and dress before installing myself in my chair to break the no screens rule long enough to check my email. It would be just my luck if a great mystery presented itself while I’m not looking out for it.

I’ve rejected four inquiries that are just cheating spouses, and one flirting housewife, and two kids with lost pets, when Mrs. Hudson taps on the door.

“I’ve made you a sandwich, dear.” She says as she comes in. She takes my laptop off my knee and replaces it with a plate, on which is a sandwich on a bed of crisps. She puts the laptop under her arm and gives me a look that says, ‘I know you’re not meant to be using that.’

“I thought you’d gone out again, until I heard the pipes in the bathroom. I came up at breakfast, even poked my head into your room and couldn’t see any sign of you.”

“I stayed upstairs last night.” I say. “I slept late.”

“Oh. Good for you. You do look well rested.” She says with a wink.

“It’s not like that.” I sigh.

“Course not.” She says, clearly unconvinced, heading for the door. “Eat that and I’ll bring you some scones for afternoon tea.”

She is gone before I can argue, and she takes my bloody computer with her.

I am surprised to see it is a bit after six when John come in juggling Rosie, a nappy bag and a package of fish and chips. I hadn’t realised it was so late.

He plonks Rosie in my lap and takes the rest of the things into the kitchen.

“What did you do today?” he calls over the rattle of plates and cups. I don’t know why he bothers. I’d eat the chips straight out of the paper.

“Umm.” I say. Then realised I’m not exactly sure. I look around feebly for clues. “Not much. Mrs. Hudson made scones.”

It’s a guess though. I know she said something about scones, but did she make them? Did I eat some? I hate the memory loss. I had thought I was getting past it, but every time I think that, a new gap appears in my recent past. Every time I think I am better it is only because I realise, I was worse the day before than I had appreciated at the time. But what does that mean for how bad I am today? 

“The chips were a good guess.” I say hoping to steer the conversation away from my day.

He gives me an odd look as he comes back in balancing the plates and cups. “Yeah, you sent me a text.”

Shit. I don’t remember that either. Rosie is wriggling to get down and I distract her with the big magnifying glass. She sucks wet marks onto the surface. Her lips looking huge and twisted through the glass.

“You don’t remember. Do you?” John asks.

I shake my head. I feel defeated. Before I even check my phone. I know I will see the sent message there, yet I have no recollection of sending it.

“It will take time Sherlock. It’s getting better.”

“I know.” I say a bit defensively.

We eat quietly. I don’t have any appetite, but I don’t want to bicker with John about it, so I choke down as much as I can. Rosie eats as much as I do, and I try to lick the sauce off her fingers to make her giggle. Inevitably, we get smears of sauce on both my shirt and dressing gown. And quite a bit on my face too.

John smiles at the mess we have made of each other and reaches into the nappy bag to retrieve the wipes. Rosie squirms to get away from both of us, not wanting her face or hands washed.

“I might just put her in the tub.” John suggests as Rosie wins the battle to escape and runs on wobbly legs towards the kitchen. He throws the baby wipes into my lap and says “you might want to take care of that” as he gestures towards the side of my face with a grin.

The wipe comes away covered in sauce, the likeness to blood gives me a shudder.

While John is taking care of Rosie, I check my phone. I want to know what I said to John earlier.

Chips from the place near your work. Please. SH

The please seems to be an afterthought. I’m such an arsehole.

Sure thing. Do you mind if Rosie stays tonight? Molly has an early start tomorrow.

Of course. She is always welcome.

I thought you said she cries too much.

She does, but I’m sure I will cope.

Good. See you tonight.

Well at least that clears up my uncertainties about whether John is staying here tonight. It had seemed possible that he might make a run for it after last night. I am unsure what this means for sleeping arrangements. I was more comfortable sleeping in his room than I have been anywhere for a very long time. Maybe that was just the sleeping pills, or was it the change of scenery or was it John’s calming presence? Too many variables changed at one time. Very poor way to gather data.

I am too apprehensive to ask and not presumptuous enough to just get into his bed. Boundaries: he is fond of such things. 

While John is still bathing Rosie; I slip in to brush my teeth. He is using the suds in her hair to give her a mohawk, while Rosie tries to turn her rubber ducky into a submarine. They are both absorbed in chattering in a dialect I neither speak nor recognise. 

“Night, John,” I say, while I am still facing the mirror. I see his reflection as he turns. Emotions slide across his face. He goes from quizzical to worried to disappointed all in a brief moment.

Then a smile settles, and he says “Night.” 

I hope he will stop me as I go through to my room. He doesn’t.

I can hear them talk and play as I get ready for bed, I listen to them as I doze off.

I wake to the silence in a cold sweat with my skin crawling. I kick the blankets free before I can control myself.

John is there moments later. This tells me everything I need to know about how loud I was. 

“Come upstairs.” He says from the doorway.

The next night he does not bother to come down, he just rings my phone and when I answer he mumbles, “come up.”

I think he is already asleep but when I climb under the covers next to him, he says, “Tomorrow night just come up here, don’t wait until the middle of the night.”


	17. L'esprit de l'escalier. Sherlock Holmes.

John is snoring; it is rather loud. Between the racket and the need to use the bathroom, going back to sleep isn’t an option. How can John bare the long walk down to the loo at night? Urgh, what a pain. We will have to swap rooms eventually.

I slip out as quietly as I can so as not to wake either John or Rosie. By the time I get to the door I realise that I must have stood up too quickly. Dizzy and blinded by a bright white that is only the creation of a drop in blood pressure. I ignore the open door behind me, and grab for the banister, holding it tightly as I lower myself onto the top step. It is always wiser to sit down than fall down. A hard-won lesson, drummed in over time.

Leaning forward, I suck in a few deep breaths. This concussion is really getting rather tedious. 

While I wait for my body to sort out its internal dramas my thoughts wonder to John. How is he coping with the things I told him? It was a lot to take it. 

I hear soft footsteps behind me. I turn my head; moving slowly and deliberately, but I cannot see anyone there. I wonder if it was a hallucination. They happen sometimes, a gift from the past. Too many indulgences with chemicals that are best not forced into the blood stream. 

More footsteps are followed by the sound of the door shutting quietly. To my relief a very real John comes and wraps a woollen blanket around my shoulders. He sits down beside me, and I extend the blanket so that he can wrap it around himself too. 

“Are you ok? He asks me in a low voice. 

“Sure, fine.” I reply, also conscious of keeping quiet so as to not wake Rosie.

“What’s going on?”

“I was going to the loo, just needed a bit of a sit down on the way. Got dizzy.” I confess, embarrassed by this revelation. 

“Oh, good.” John sounds relieved, then surprised at himself. “No, not good; actually, I think you should go in and get checked out again. Just to be sure.

John pauses, eyebrows scrunched, then ploughs on. “It’s just you’ve been a bit distant and I was… I was just… I thought you might be avoiding me after our conversation the other night. You weren’t put off by that?” 

It is then that I realise that John has held an aura of tension these past few days. I had been so caught up in my own revelations and with feeling discombobulated that I had not stopped to notice. There is something that he needs to say. I know that with instant clarity. 

“Whatever you want to say, It’s alright.” I tell him.

“I’ve been thinking about all the things that were said. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all. How I said that I needed to work out the feelings that I have… about you. Well, I umm… I do care about you. In fact, I care very much. Probably more than it is normal to care for a friend.”

He takes a deep breath, blows it out. Continues on, building up speed as he speaks. “I’m struggling with it, a bit. Quite a lot, truth be told. I never considered that I might have feelings for a man that weren’t exactly… platonic. I think what I’m trying to say, is that I would want us to be more than just friends, I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t even know if you feel the same way. It’s fine, if you don’t.” 

“I do feel the same way.” I whisper impulsively as I take his hand. I am torn between elation and fear. It is my turn to stutter and blunder. “But after what happened, out there, while I was away. I’m not sure if… how I will cope with things… if you want it to be physical between us, I’m not sure if I can. I’m scared of how I might react.”

““No, I wouldn’t expect… Damn. I’m making such a mess of this.” He says in a tight voice. We a both on edge. Terrible at this. 

“It’s fine.” I say too quickly. “We are both going to struggle with this, in our own way.”

He squeezes my hand a little. “Look at us, we’re a proper mess.”

Neither of us seem to know what to say and silence stretches long between us. 

It is John who breaks the impasse. 

“I haven’t been with anyone since Mary.” He confesses. “I’m an idiot; when I was with her, I was nearly tempted to step outside our marriage and, now that she is gone, I feel like I would be betraying her more somehow.”

“She wouldn’t think that.” I say, leaving the cliché ‘she’d want you to be happy,’ unsaid, knowing it would sound too cheesy.

“I know.” John agrees. “She liked you, you know?”

I nod. I know what he is really saying. He is saying that she would approve of us being together. 

“Have you been with anybody since… then?” he asks delicately.

I scoff, “I was barely with anyone before.”

“You never…?” John asks in a deliberately neutral tone.

“Oh, no. I just didn’t make a habit of it. Too many messy emotions.” I say. “Since then, I haven’t felt… inclined.”

“What about, you know, by yourself?” 

“Doesn’t everyone?” I ask, confused. 

“I don’t know, Sherlock. You’re still a complete mystery to me.” John says, then realising that I haven’t really grasped what he is driving at he continues. “Do you like it though?” 

“Not all that much. It is just release. I find it hard to stay in the moment, especially since...” I admit, hot with the embarrassment of these revelations. 

There is another long period of silence.

“How long were you there?” John whispers.

I snort a disgusted laugh. “I don’t actually know. Imagine that, me not knowing. It was more than two weeks, less than a month, I think.”

“Jesus.” John mutters. “How are you still alive?” 

I shrug my good shoulder. I truly don’t know. 

“What happened to the animals that did all that to you? Please tell me they are all dead?”

“Yes. Mycroft organised it. I was barely conscious, but I can remember how much the van shook when the bombs struck. Apparently, no one at the compound was spared.” I contemplate how much to tell John about Rimac. As little as possible, I decide. “There was one man that got away. He wasn’t there when the bombs dropped. I went back later, dealt with him.”

“Who? Which one?” I can hear anger in John’s voice. He hates the people who hurt me as much as I do, maybe more. It is still raw for him.

“The one that raped me.” 

“You killed him?” Hope has joined the anger in his tone. 

“You know as well as I do, what the cost of taking a life is. You know how it can stay with you forever. He was not worthy of that action.”

“But Magnussen?” 

“That was different. That was for Mary. That was for you. That was worth it.”


	18. Sentiment. John Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bonus microchapter for you.
> 
> 🖤🖤🖤 Happy 10 years 🖤🖤🖤

“That was different. That was for Mary. That was for you. That was worth it.” Sherlock says as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. 

I understand then, the depth of the feelings that Sherlock has held for a very long time. I am shocked that he killed a man for me and my wife, I always have been. There have been few moments in my life that were more shocking than watching Sherlock shoot Magnussen in cold blood. That heart freezing moment will stay with me forever, but I am even more shocked to learn that he did that when he did not even think it was worth it to dish out this same treatment to someone who has made his life an absolute misery. 

“What did you do to him then?” I ask.

“I made sure he was locked up and uncomfortable for the rest of his life.” Sherlock says simply.

I smile as I realise the most obvious answer and say “Prison.”

“Nope, a nursing home, with nothing for company but cheap nurses and a photo album to remind him of his hateful father.” He stops suddenly, as if has said more than he intended. 

“How the hell did you pull that off?” I wonder again if there is anything he cannot achieve. 

“I posed as a caring nephew. He wasn’t well, he had no family. It was easy really.”

Somehow, I don’t believe it was easy though. How could it be easy to go back and face someone who had done something so cruel and so… personal? 

I get it then; it comes to me in a flash. “He’s dead. The dead uncle. The phone call, that day in the antiques shop. No wonder you were so shaken.” 

“Yes, John. Well done.” He sounds sad as he says it, as if something about it is bothering him. 

He goes quiet and I am almost going to suggest we go somewhere warmer, maybe even get a cuppa, when he starts talking again.

“I know I pushed you away after the trouble with Euros; told you to stay in your own place. When I told you that it was because I couldn’t deal with Rosie screaming at night.” He pauses and, in that pause, all the anger that I had felt when he had rejected the idea of me moving back in swirls around me. Until he continues and then all that anger is blown away and replaced with heartbreak. “It was a lie. It was really that I didn’t want you to deal with me screaming at night. I was embarrassed, I didn’t want you to find out about any of this. I was going to take it all to my grave. Now that you know, I would like you to move back in, properly, permanently, if you want to.”

“Yeah, I think that I’d like that.” I say with a voice that sounds thick with emotion.


	19. Burden.  John Watson

After a monotonous half day at work, I pick up Rosie and we stop by our place to pick up a few more things. She is grizzles as put her in her playpen; holding her little arms up, wanting me to pick her up again. I suspect that she is both grumpy and tired after a morning session at day care. I distract her with my iPad. The upbeat music and songs I reluctantly know all the words to form an odd soundtrack as I race around throwing things in a bag. I am impatient to get back to Baker Street. It seems that I don’t want to be away from there for even a moment. The offer to move back in permanently came as a welcome relief but in a fashion that is so typically Sherlock. He did not seem concerned with any of the details. Just brushing it off when I asked how much the rent would be, and where Rosie should sleep and how we would child proof the rooms and if I should sell my place. 

He just said, cryptically, that it would all ‘work itself out’. 

How will work out though? How can it possibly work out? I have no idea what I am doing. I have no idea how to be in love with another person after Mary, and I especially have no idea how to be in love with another guy. I have no idea how to raise a child. I have no idea how to raise a child alone, or in a relationship. I have no idea how to redesign my identity. I have no idea how to look after someone who has faced the kinds of trauma that Sherlock has. I have no idea how to be with him, but worst of all I have no idea how to be without him.

I have to sit down for a few minutes to quiet my mind. Just pack some things, that is all I need to do right now. Rosie’s things first, they are more important. Clothing and nappies and toys and the little jars of mushy vegetables that smell like farts when you take the lid off, all go into the nappy bag that Mary bought because she liked the giraffe on the front. 

I pack a few changes of socks and pants and shirts for myself. A lot of my things are already there; they have migrated there slowly since I agreed to stay while Sherlock recovered from the concussion. Still, before I know it, there are three bags by the front door. Once, I could go anywhere with just a small backpack. Those days seem like a lifetime ago. 

As an afterthought I fold up Rosie’s playpen and take that too. At least we can confine her until we child proof the stairs and the kitchen laboratory. 

Once the cab driver drops us off at Baker Street it takes me three trips to get everything inside. The first trip sees me leave most of the stuff in the street until I can pass Rosie over to Mrs Hudson. She dotes over my daughter until I can get the playpen set up and the bags upstairs. The initial awkward trudge up the stairs confirms my thoughts that Sherlock isn’t back yet.

Rosie has jam on her face when I pop back in to relieve Mrs Hudson from childcare duties. She is a saint, that woman. 

I grab the mail that I have stepped over multiple times as I came and went through the front door. I flick through the letters as I go up with Rosie plastered to my side like a little pink koala. Three of the letters look to be bills, one is from the London Symphony and one has a handwritten address; could be a case. 

The four official letters I throw onto the desk and the final one I place on the mantelpiece next to the knife. 

The letter with the knife through it catches my eye. It wasn’t there the other day and it was not among any of the other mail I have brought up. Sherlock doesn’t bring the mail up. The writing on the front of the envelope is messy, just Sherlock’s name and no address. I wonder how it came to be here. 

I should just leave it, but in the world of Sherlock Holmes privacy and ownership are elastic concepts. 

I place Rosie in the playpen with her favourite teddy and some blocks, hoping that will be enough to keep her occupied. I cannot handle another rendition of Thomas the Tank Engine or Pepper Pig or any other bloody kids tune. 

I consider looking at the letter, turning it over in my hands. Sherlock will be back soon. He was booked in for a check-up this morning and he planned to catch Greg afterwards to give the statement he had been putting off. 

What the hell. It’s probably a case. If I read it, maybe we can ponder over it during dinner. It will be nice to have something to talk about that is a bit lighter. 

I flop down in my chair and open the letter.

I am not prepared for what I find inside the envelope. My eyes flick between the disturbing photo, made all the more unsettling for the knife wound that is now through the neck of the Sherlock effigy. It is clear who the cruel words are from. My heart is pounding against my ribs as I read through it and realise all the implications of what is said. The holding a piece of tangible evidence of the continued indignities Sherlock has suffered at this man’s hands brings everything home with a sense of shocking reality. The knowledge that his rapist witnessed him calling out for me in desperation cuts deeply. I flush hot and my skin prickles with fluctuating quantities of rage that I understand clearly and embarrassment that I don’t. 

Then there is the bequest of the man’s own father and all the guilt and shame that apparently comes with him. I wonder if even someone as strong as Sherlock can shake off the power of that suggestion. Sherlock has quite enough to deal with, without adding more to his problems. 

When and how had he got the letter? It is years since this man died. Why would it appear now?

“Lestrade cancelled on me. He got called out on a double homicide and wouldn’t let me go along.” Sherlock announced loudly as he barges through the door. “Anyone would think…” 

He stops when he sees the letter and the photograph in my hands. Without a word snatches it from my hand and calmly folds it back into the envelope and puts it back where I found it. I flinch as he stabs the knife savagely back through it. 

Rosie is calling “hi, hi, hi, hi” in a shrill voice. She wants Sherlock to pick her up.

“You had no right.” His voice is strained but not aggressive. It would be easier if it was. A row would be much better than the empty pit of guilt and horror in my stomach.

“I know.” 

Sherlock sinks down in his chair. Rosie is still calling to him and waving her arms to get his attention. Sherlock doesn’t notice. He is looking into the empty fireplace. 

“Sherlock.” I say to get his attention. The wounded glace he shoots towards me cuts deeply. “The letter, is it from the Serbian man, the one who assaulted you?”

“Clearly.”

“Is it true what he said?”

“Yes, I think about it every day.” He says, and any anger he had seemed to be harbouring slips away and is replaced by a look of deep sadness. 

Oh god, that’s not the bit I was talking about. 

“Did you…” the words stick in my throat, “ask for me?”

“Oh,” he sighs, realising his mistake, then continues almost flippantly, “apparently, I don’t remember, but it would hardly surprise me if I did. The thought of coming home to you was the only thing keeping me going.”

Sherlock stands, goes to brush past me into the kitchen. I can almost see him rebuilding the walls around himself and I am unsure that I should say what I am thinking. I grab his wrist lightly, just enough of a touch to halt his flight. He stops stiffly beside me. I know, with instant clarity that what I want to say is true, but I am not sure how it will be received if I point it out. I must act quickly, or I will lose the chance. I lift my chin and swallow. Decide that courage is something to strive for and that I am nothing if I lose my nerve now. 

“You loved me, even back then.”

“Yes, of course.” He agrees, breaking free and striding out of the room. “I never stopped.”


	20. The Dissembler Sherlock Holmes.

The letter needs to be back in the safety deposit box now. That is the single-minded thought that consumes me until I have the opportunity to get out of the house, to get _it _out of the house. I am furious at myself for leaving it in plain sight and I am angry at John for reading it. Then I am mad at myself for being a hypocrite because if John left a letter lying around, I would definitely read it.__

__I don’t sleep at all that night despite John’s presence beside me and I don’t think that John does either. We both just lie there, lost in our own thoughts. He has been quiet, no, practically silent, since I confessed the depth of my feelings for him. If I wasn’t so busy being horrified that he has read the letter and been exposed to everything with in it, I would probably be worrying about that, but there is no room in my brain._ _

__When John gets up for work, I stay in bed; hiding, sulking, not wanting to talk to him, waiting to hear the front door close beneath me. The click of the lock spurs me into action._ _

__I go straight to the bank. I place the letter back in the same page of the photo album. The only differences now is that it has a torn top fold, and two knife holes through it, and I the hole I have in the pit of my stomach._ _

__The power of Rimac’s suggestion that I adopt the haunting of his father is pervasive. I know it is bullshit, but yet it is like an ear worm. I just cannot seem to get it out of my head._ _

__I walk home rather than catching a cab. The fresh air is welcome after days of not leaving the house. Arriving home, I find that I am more exhausted than I should be from a half hour walk. A half hour walk that should have only taken eighteen minutes. I am again forced to concede that I am far from fully healed._ _

__The headache is back, every movement feels too sudden as if my brain is sloshing about loosely inside my skull, yet there is a squeezing pressure that makes it feel like my skull is too small. The doctor reassured me yesterday that this, and all my other frustrating symptoms are completely normal for someone who was only a week into recovering from a concussion._ _

__I lay down on the couch, hoping that staying still will provide some relief. It does not and as the minutes tick by I am more and more tempted to fill a syringe with bliss. Only the thought of John’s disappointment the other day and the fragile state of our friendship stop me._ _

__I get up and take the prescription medication instead. It is disappointing at best._ _

__With the letter safely returned to its hiding place I am free to consider where I stand with John. He shut down yesterday after he found the letter; the only time he spoke to me after that was to tell me to come up to bed. Up until then I had thought that I would not be welcome there either._ _

__I know that there is every chance he will come home tonight and tell me that he is not going to move in after all or worse still, not come here at all._ _

__His fragile sense of self just wasn’t ready for a confession of feelings that strong. I have scared him off. I don’t blame him; who would be able to cope with all that I have dumped on him in the past few days. An invalid friend confesses both a disgustingly tortured past and his undying love within a few days. No wonder he left without saying goodbye this morning._ _

__These thoughts circle me throughout the day. I wish my shoulder was healed enough that I could play; at least that would clear my mind. I try composing but I cannot focus without the music. Not a single original thought pops into my mind for hours and I start to wonder if my brain really is irreparably broken._ _

__John’s footsteps on the stairs give me relief. They don’t sound angry or rushed or even pensive. It just sounds like John coming home. I turn my back on the room, lay facing the back of the couch. I’m not sure if I am giving him privacy or if I am hiding._ _

__“Hello,” he says, sitting down in the space behind my knees._ _

__“Hello.” I say back._ _

__“About yesterday.” Here we go, I think. “I freaked out. Lot to take in this.”_ _

__“It’s fine.” I reassure him._ _

__“I want this. Whatever this is between us. I just didn’t realise how strongly you felt about me.” He puts a hand on my arm. “I’m catching up. I need time to figure this out”_ _

__“I never thought there was any chance for us so I guess I would be prepared for the wait to be sempiternal.”_ _

__“It won’t take that long.” He laughs a little, then goes serious. “I do love you.”_ _

__“Yeah, I know.”_ _


	21. The Cicatrices.  Sherlock Holmes.

For the past three days, as soon as John gets home, I force him to check the stitches on my head. I am dying to have a proper shower. To wash my hair. Each day he tells me not just yet, maybe tomorrow. 

On the fourth day he ignores my questions and the top of my head that I have thrust towards him. Instead he drops Rosie into my lap and heads straight into the kitchen with the bags of groceries. 

“Hello Sherlock, how was your day? Yes, mine was good too.” He says in his most facetious voice. “The traffic was a nightmare. Work was busy, a twelve-year-old threw up on me.” 

I tuck Rosie under my arm in the way that makes her giggle so much. She puts her arms out like she is flying and kicks her legs as I carry her into the kitchen. It’s a good thing she is so entertained by this method of transport because my ruined shoulder won’t allow me to carry her two handed. 

John is putting the groceries away as I make a lap around the kitchen table making aeroplane noises as Rosie squeals with delight. I see a smile sneak onto John’s face. I am still making laps when he slumps down into a chair with a beer in hand. He looks worn out. 

“Come here, I’ll have a look.” He tells me after he has taken a gulp of his drink. 

He goes to get up, but I motion at him to stay there and I sit cross legged at his feet. Rosie makes an escape as soon as her feet hit the ground. She is so fast now that the baby gate at the stairs is a necessity. 

John his fingers search through my greasy hair. A shiver runs down my spine.

“Ok, they can come out, wait here.” 

“Finally!” I smile, ducking as he swings a leg awkwardly over my head.

I grab his beer off the table and sip at it while I wait for him. He comes back with his medical kit and takes his drink back, takes a swallow and then passes it back to me.

Rosie comes tearing back in with a book in her hands. She plonks down in my lap and says “read” in a clear demanding voice. So, I read out loud from the Wonky Donkey as John takes the stitches out and we share his beer. I feel his fingertips linger on my scalp. I know that they have found a scar that is not new. He moves on silently to the next set of stiches. 

As John is finishing up I get to the final page. He joins in from memory as I read; “he was a spunky hanky panky cranky stinky dinky lanky honky tonky winky wonky donkey” while Rosie claps her hands. John’s breath huffs on my neck as he laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. 

John pats me on the shoulder to signal that he is finished, and I tip my head back to look up to him. 

“Thank you.” I say as he leans in to grab the beer bottle from me. Then as if it is the most natural thing in the world, he presses his lips softly against mine. 

“Was that ok?” He asks, sounding almost shy.

I nod, unable to think of the right words.

He takes a gulp of beer, then kisses me again. I can taste the beer on his lips this time. He breaks off and stands up, leaving me slightly logy.

“Off to bed, little miss.” John says sweeping up Rosie as I close the book. 

“Good night, Blossom,” I say as he holds her close so she can plant wet open mouth kisses on my face. I wince as I will away the memory of the Nightman’s wet mouth against my own. I am glad they don’t notice. 

I take on of the best showers of my life while John puts Rosie to bed; he has shifted her to my room since it is closer to both the kitchen and the loo, and since I have appropriated a space in his room. I wash my hair twice. It feels wonderfully good to have clean hair again and to be free from the itchy stitches. 

John is drinking another beer when I come through the kitchen. 

“You off to bed?” He asks. 

“Yeah,” I sigh, “tired.”

I am always tired lately.

“I’ll be up in a bit.” 

I lay there staring at the roof, contemplating whether the kiss means there has been a change in gears in our relationship, when John climbs into his side of the bed. He rolls towards me and slowly places his hand on my chest. He is careful when he touches me, and I appreciate it. I think we are both scared. Scared of what it means, of how it could go wrong, of how I might react. I wonder if he can feel my heart rate quicken.

“Do you think that, in the future, maybe, you might like our relationship to be a physical one?” He asks me with a clumsily formality that tell of his rehearsing this. 

I idea stirs something akin to arousal within me, but arousal sit too closely to shame and fear to have any of the positive appeal it once might have held. Pausing, I contemplate the best ways to say what I am thinking. 

“I’m not against it, exactly, but there are so many awful memories, they are so close to the surface. I don’t know what…” My voice trails off.

“What things would we avoid then,” he asks, haltingly, “if we to ever, you know, um, I don’t know, fool around?”

I haven’t spoken about the details of what happened to me in Serbia. I know that if I tell him what I cannot face, the implications of what I was subjected to will be clear to him.

“I’m not sure.” I say. It’s evasive, but not untrue. I don’t know where to begin. I roll so that my back is to him. He shuffles closer to me. I don’t really enjoy his chest being pressed against my back, not because it is him, but because of the last time someone was that close, but even in the dim light I don’t want him to see my face. I don’t want to see his; I don’t want to see disappointment there. Or the disgust, when I say more.

He waits for me to collect my thoughts. His face against my neck. I push away the thoughts of Rimac and try to focus on John’s steady breathing. Hoping it will help to reassure me. 

“I don’t... I can’t...” the false starts irritate me, so I rush to get the words out. “I won’t be able to perform fellatio, and anal penetration is out of the question. I will struggle with any hand contact on my cock, even my own is too much sometimes. No soft touches, almost anywhere. He liked to pretend it was consensual by being gentle, even though he was excited by me being chained up.

“Even this is… confronting.” I gesture to indicate our position, causing him to withdraw instantly, leaving just his hand on my side. The cold air between us feels worse than his presence did, but I cannot tell him since I just sent him away. I scrunch my eyes closed and continue as best I can. “Wet kisses and all the sounds and smells associated with sex are triggers. There is so much I don’t remember clearly that there might be other things that I don’t handle well. I’m really not sure if I’ll handle anything well.” 

“It’s ok. It doesn’t matter, it’s ok if we never do anything.” He says, clearly alarmed at my list of limits, then he continues hesitantly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

He leaves it at that. I lay tense and annoyed with myself. I hate that the shit things that were done to me without my control continue to control me.

After a while John asks. “What about a back rub? You’re so tense.”

I know wants more, I’d be a fool not to, but I trust him to respect my boundaries, to not push me, and all things considered, I guess that that says a lot. 

I nod and he rucks up my t-shirt. I sit up to pull it over my head. I pause. My body is a mess but that is not what really bothers me.

“Are you ok?” He asks me. “It is alright if you don’t want to.”

“It’s been a long time since someone touched me without... violence.” I say as I lay back down on my stomach.

“I hate those fuckers.” He mutters under his breath. He hasn’t connected that he is one of the ones who has hurt me. 

He massages my shoulders. Smoothing his hands along the length of my muscles. His touch is firm and confident. I know he must feel the scar tissue that mars the surface of my back. Many of the scars are barely visible but touch will alert him to much more of the damage that was done.

His hands don’t falter at the scars though. They carry on until they find a knot in the tight muscles. Then he works at it until the knot crackles and fades beneath his firm touch. Then he moves onto the next one. Soon I feel heavy and relaxed. 

“There is a scar on your scalp, it’s not knew. Did that happen there?” John asks.

“Yes, Metal pipe.” I say in a thick voice.

“Do you mind, if I ask about them?” 

“No, I want you to know.”

He runs his finger along one of the long marks on my lower back. “How did this one happen?”

“Power cord, I think it was off a kettle.” 

“What about this one?” He rubs his thumb over my shoulder blade.

“That was one of the first. Bicycle chain.” That one had hurt so much I gagged.

He moves his hand a bit lower and traces the striations that lay there.

“That was the bicycle chain too. Most of them are. They got quite infected.”

I can hear him swallow. 

He runs his left hand along my right arm, the one closest to where he kneels beside me. I tense at the soft touch.

“Firmer.” I direct.

He presses down a little more. He gets to my wrist. “From the chains?”

“Metal cuffs.” I explain. His scrutiny is beginning to weigh on me.

“There are others?”

“Yeah, heaps.” I pause, I need a minute. “Show my yours.”

I roll over to face him. He undoes the buttons on his night shirt and pushes the fabric aside. Even after all these years I have never seen it. He is always fastidious about keeping himself covered. I had expected a little puck mark like the one on my chest, but my eyes are drawn to a jagged scar splayed like the open petals of a red lily. Exit wound, high velocity, large calibre. I surgical scar runs the length of his lumpy clavicle. 

I realise I am staring stupidly. “Can I?”

He nods and I run my fingertips over his skin. The textures change from soft and warm to smooth and tight, almost like plastic. Ripples of hard-fought healing beneath the skin. I trace a line from the exit wound across the top of his shoulder in search of the entry wound. The depression that I am looking for is lower than I expect. It must have gone through his scapular. He lets me explore without complaint. 

When my hand stills on his shoulder, I notice him staring at the scar on my chest. He reaches out and his finger brush along the length of it. 

The elephant in the room, the little divot and the long incision from the right anterolateral thoracotomy that saved my life after Mary shot me, and then saved me again a week later when they opened my chest again to stop the bleeding. 

“They are my favourites.” I say.

“Why?” He looks desperately uncomfortable.

“Gifts from a friend.”

He frowns. I know he has a hard time with what Mary did. I direct his attention away from it.

I take his hand and direct it to the little indentation below my collar bone. His warm fingers manipulate the dimpled scar. 

“Electrical burn and um, staples.”

“What do you mean, staples?” he asks incredulously.

“He used staples to attach the electrical cables to my skin.” 

“How on earth did he do that?”

“With a stapler, obviously.”

“Oh, of course.” He says absently, then scrunches his eyebrows as he notices the scars partner. “Jesus. There is another one on the other side.”

“And here.” I direct his touch to the one on the inside my left bicep, “and here” I roll my right arm away so he can see the other one, “and both palms” I turn my hands up for him to see. “And here,” I point at the dimple on my solar plexus. As his hand moves across my chest he brushes my nipple, an accident or an advance, I am unsure, but my breath hitches and he must feel it. His eyes snap up to mine, questioning, concerned. I shake my head minutely. He gives a tiny nod of unquestioning acceptance. I let out a relieved breath and his eyes move back to my chest. His shaking fingers continue their scientific exploration of the craters in my skin. 

He clears his throat, “the car battery?” 

“Yeah.”

“The pain must have been unimaginable.” 

“It was unpleasant.” I downplay. 

He scoffs. Knowing that it is my way of agreeing. Then he whispers, “please don’t let there be any more.” 

I sit up to hitch the leg of my pyjama pants up to show him the raised welts and deep notches where chunks were torn from my right leg. They are by far the worst of the scars from Serbia. “These were made with a pair of pliers. Mycroft picked them from amongst a selection of other tools. He was not expecting them to be used with such enthusiasm.” 

I lay back on the pillows as John traces over the pitted and raised sections of skin. I cannot tell him they were earned on one of the worst days of my life. He would ask what the others were and I cannot bear to tell him that he featured in all of them. When he brushes over the one on the inside of my thigh, I take him by the wrist. “Stop now.”

I release him and turn away. It is suddenly all too much. 

I feel his lips brush my shoulder. 

“Thank you.” He says as he moves to his side of the bed, sensing that I need some space.


	22. The Fragmentation.  Sherlock Holmes.

About a week after John moves back in, I am staring at the crystals I have set up under my microscope when he says something to me. The crystals are from a new formula I have been trying out; sodium magnesium oxalato aluminate. They should come out perfectly clear and neatly geometric but they formula is twitchy and so far, I am not having much success. John says something else, I must filter it into background noise, because I don’t process what he says. None of us slept well last night. Rosie had been cranky all day yesterday and she woke up in the night with a fever. This seems to add to the tension that has been slowly building for days. Something is bothering John; something I cannot quiet recognise. 

John taps me on the shoulder. Then he is shouting.

“Sherlock! Get off your arse and grab Rosie for me.” The frustration clear in his voice. I look up to see that he has already turned away. He is getting Rosie’s breakfast ready. Rosie is crying from her playpen in the sitting room, but I hadn’t noticed until now. 

I get up immediately, feeling the thick tension in the room. It makes me cringe.

John reaches up to the shelf above the sink and fumbles the mug he had been reaching for. He moves fast to try to catch it as if falls. He has good reflexes; that is one of the things that make him so valuable to work with, but the movement catches me off guard and I flinch away. The mug shatters across the floor. More facets than my pointless crystals.

John swears loudly. Rosie wails louder still.

I am frozen in place for a moment, embarrassment and fear vying for top priority.

I don’t let either win. I simply pick my way out of the room, stepping between the broken shards of ceramic mug.

I go to Rosie. I step right over the rail of the play pen and sit down on her blanket. She stumbles towards me crying and throws herself into my lap. My hands are still shaking as I hold her to my chest and smell her hair.

“It’s ok, Blossom, I’ve got you.” I mumble into her hair, trying to sound soothing, but I think it might be her who is soothing me. I wonder how long I can do this for; this living in a limbo between fear and pseudo normality. I used to enjoy things that were novel and extreme and intense and volatile. I want that again I want to get back to work, to playing my violin, to do chemistry that makes sense, to have urgent calls from Lestrade and late nights solving problems, and to having John by my side the way it used to be before we both made such a mess of things. 

I can hear John in the kitchen, muttering and sweeping up. Rosie snuggles closer to me. I count the freckles on her cheeks. 

When John comes in my hands are steady again, and Rosie is asleep. She looks most like John when she is asleep, yet when she is awake it is Mary that I see. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t...” He begins, his voice just above a whisper but I cut him off

“It’s fine, you don’t need to apologise.”

“Yes, I do. I saw it. The moment you thought I would hit you,” John pauses as if he is struggling with something, “again. It tore my heart out. I deserve that though. I have no right to your trust. Not after the morgue… after everything I’ve done. I’m so sorry, Sherlock.”

“I’m just a bit jumpy these days; it’s not just about that day. You know that.” I whisper back, not trusting my voice to say steady at full volume.

He shakes his head. I can see him fighting some internal battle. 

“You deserve better. Both of you. I’m going to do better.” He nods once to himself. The decision is made. I know his apology is genuine. I know that once he sets his mind to something, he will follow it through. We both know it takes more than a decision but that it is also where things begin.

“Thank you.” 

He climbs over the playpen rail and sits down beside me on Rosie’s blanket, close enough that our shoulders touch, close enough that I can smell coffee on his breath. He brushes the blonde hair back from Rosie’s forehead. She doesn’t even stir. 

We are almost the same height when we are sitting down. He reaches over to me, his hand on the back of my neck, his thumb brushing the back of my ear. His movements are slow and careful, and I try hard not to tense up. I look to him and see the worry and doubt in his eyes. 

It is so natural in that moment to lean in and kiss him. The kiss is soft and warm and slow. For a moment everything is all right. I want this to last.


	23. Unpack.  John Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has fought me all the way. Hence, it being later than usual. Don't blame my beta for any mistakes, I just finished rewriting the bulk of it, so she hasn't seen most of it. Please let me know when you spot the inevitable pesky mistakes. 
> 
> It's a whopper by my standards and I probably should have chopped it in half, but you, my beautiful souls, deserve it in full as thanks for your patience.
> 
> In some ways, I feel like this is the chapter I needed to write the most. I hope I have done the themes in it justice. 
> 
> Big love to you all xx

My worst fears are realised the next morning; when I wake up Sherlock isn’t there. My blood runs cold. I have ruined it. No, I ruined it a long time ago, but Sherlock has finally realised. I am still reeling from the look on Sherlock’s face when I broke the coffee mug. Even after the promises I made, I still don’t think there is any way he can ever forgive me.

I get Rosie ready for day care in a haze of despair. The only thing about today that is going well is that she seems to be feeling better. Although if she was still off colour, I would have a decent excuse to skip work. I don’t really want to go in today, but I know I have to. I had purchased the clinic with the money that Mary left to me. It is an investment so that Rosie will be financially supported, no matter what. Because it is mine, I can take off as much time as I need. Also, because it is mine, I rarely take time off. The sense of responsibility towards my patients means I turn up even when I really don’t want to. 

The thoughts don’t stop circling in my head. How could I have been so stupid to not realise that I was part of the problem? I have spent years blaming Sherlock for all the things that have gone wrong in my life and failing to recognise that I am one of the things that have gone wrong in his. 

He is too smart to fall for my hopeless apologies, but I try to ring him on the way to work. I need to explain, to apologise again, a hundred times over. He ignores my calls. 

The morning drags on and I don’t dare look at my phone. I don’t want to see a message that says, ‘I don’t want to see you ever again.’ I couldn’t handle that.

I take a break for morning tea. I’m not hungry, I just need a minute. I sit on the back step at my clinic in the weak sunshine. I finally take out my phone bracing myself for the message.

There are two.

_How long would it take for someone allergic to strawberries to die of anaphylaxis, if they fell into a vat of jam?_

Then twenty minutes later

_Hurry up John, a man’s innocence depends on it._

My relief is palpable. I reply with a time frame and a wilted sigh. It is as if the stress of wondering was all that was keeping me inflated. 

I sag with relief. How can I be so lucky to be getting another chance? After all the chance I have been given. I know that I cannot bank on getting another one. I really need to sort out my shit. I need to never give him another reason to fear me. I have been the source of far too many. Why is that? How is it that he is so capable of making my blood boil? No one else has ever had that effect on me so often. Except maybe Mary. Maybe that’s the link. The two people I love the most. 

But is it the same kind of love? That is the question that has been grating at me for weeks. If I’m honest, maybe longer, maybe months, maybe even of years. And that right there is the thing. The thing I cannot seem to get my head around. 

Harry had always seemed to know she was gay. From the age of fifteen she was out and open about her sexuality. It never once seemed to bother her, even when she was teased or ridiculed, even when she got thrown out of bars for being there with another woman, even when she got bashed at a club by an irate guy she turned down with a snappy retort. She just knew. I thought I did too. Now, I’m not so sure. I wish it was as easy for me now as she made it seem back then.

I make a phone call. I don’t know who else to ask.

My palms are sweating as I wait for her to answer. I realise that we haven’t spoken since she came to visit me in the hospital after I got back from Afghanistan. It is really not fair on her to ask this of her, not after all this time.

“Hello, John, is that you?” Clara asks me in a bemused voice. I can’t call Harry; we are hardly talking at the best of times. Clara has always been kind and level-headed. 

“Yeah it is, sorry to call you after so long.” My voice sounds as shaky as I feel.

“What’s happened, is it Harry?” She asks.

“Oh, no sorry. She’s fine, I think, it has been a while but, no, I have another reason for calling.” I pause; I should have thought this through more. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” She sounds confused. 

“How did you know you were gay?” I ask in a rush. It must sound blunt. I wince at my own insensitivity. Calling out of the blue to ask something so personal is a dick act, but I have no one else to ask. 

She scoffs a little laugh. “Um, I just knew, I guess. Why, John? What’s going on? Having a sexuality crisis?”

I rub my face. “I think I might have feelings for my friend, my guy friend.” 

“Good for you.” She says. “He must be pretty special.”

I was hoping for something a little more directive than that, but at least she doesn’t laugh at me. Harry would have let go with a barrage of jokes. 

“Thanks.” I huff. “He is. How’d you know?” 

“You wouldn’t be asking otherwise.:

“I guess.”

“Is there a problem?” Clara asks gently. 

“I guess I just always thought I was only into women. I was married to one not that long ago.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Did you love her for her vagina?” Clara asks point blank. It is my turn to be surprised by her personal point-blank question.

“No, I guess not. She was smart and funny and bold.”

“You get my point, though, right? It’s not all about genitals; no one loves someone just for their bits. If you love him, it doesn’t matter what equipment he has. You’ll figure it out in the bedroom. I’m sure you have practiced with a dick and balls before, you’ll be fine.”

I laugh a little at her blunt statement and oversimplification. True to her nature; saying it exactly how it is. But when I say, “yeah.” I sound as deflated as I feel. She makes it sound so simple. It can’t be that easy, can it?

“What’s the problem?” Clara asks.

“I think I have fucked it up.” 

“Fucked what up, John?”

“All of it.” I admit. I wasn’t planning on getting into this, but it all just spills out. “It’s complicated but we have known each other for a long time, and we have just decided to try to make a go of things. It hasn’t been easy. Yesterday I got mad; he thought I was going to hit him… He thought that, because I have done it before.”

I pause to take a deep breath. God, it sounds bad, it sounds bad because it is bad. “I feel awful. He has been through a lot and I just went and made it worse.”

“Did he leave you?”

“No, I thought he did. He wasn’t there when I got up, but he was just at work.”

“Good. Don’t fuck it up again.” 

“I’m scared I will, Clara.” My voice shakes with my admission.

“You’re motivated not to, though?”

“Very much.”

“Ok good, I’ll send you a phone number. They do good work there; I send a lot of my rehab patients to them, the ones with anger issues. Call them John. Do what they say, commit to it. He sounds like he is worth it.” 

“Thank you.” I say with sincerity. “I didn’t know who else to talk to.” 

Only moments after we say goodbye my phone buzzes with a text message; it is the number Clara promised me. 

I ring the City Therapy Rooms and make an appointment for a session with an anger management counsellor. A cancellation means there is an appointment available this evening. 

I sit in the waiting room staring at an apparently soothing landscape of stone walls and country lanes. I am a mass of nerves. I try to rehearse what I will say. It all sounds too stupid. What do I say? I am angry because my best friend killed himself in front of me and then, two years later he came back to life in the middle of my proposal to my wife and then incited such anger in her that she killed him again. Don’t worry though, he came back to life yet again, only to put his life at such risk that she died to save him. Now I think I might be in love with him but I’m not sure because I’m not usually gay. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? 

The psychologist calls out to me in the waiting room. She is a small woman with curly brown hair. She introduces herself as Janette.

“Through this way, Doctor Watson.”

“Please, John is fine, otherwise I feel like I’m at work.” I say lightly. My nerves are allayed almost immediately by her gentle nature and bright smile. 

“John it is then. What kind of doctoring do you do?”

“GP, I have a little practice in Kensington.”

“I bet that keeps you out of trouble.”

I chuckle politely. If only she knew how much trouble I manage to find in the average week.

“Did you get a chance to see the sun today?” She asks. “It was so nice to have a day that wasn’t dreary.” 

“Yeah, I did actually.” I reply as she leads me into her office. “I took my tea break outside this morning. It was hardly bright enough for a suntan but much better than last week. I thought it would never stop raining.”

“I know,” she says, waving me into a chair, “I lived in Palermo for a few years, all last week I wished I was back there.” 

“It’s beautiful there.” I say, remembering the brief visit there from our honeymoon. Mary had loved it there.

“You’ve been there?”

“Just briefly, only spent a couple of days there with my wife. The weather was perfect.”

“It was nearly always perfect.” Janette says with a soft smile. “You looked sad when you spoke about your wife. Do you want to talk about that?”

“Not much to say. She died. A bit over two years ago.” 

“That is a hard burden to carry.” 

“It hasn’t been easy.” I admit. Janette lets that hang in the air. I know she is waiting to see if I have more to say. I’ve done this before though, between past therapy and living with Sherlock, I know how to sit in silence. 

“That’s not what brings you here today, though, is it, John? Not directly anyway.” Janette says. “Why don’t you tell me why you’ve come to see me?” 

“I, um, I guess I just want to have more control over my anger, it gets away from me sometimes.”

“At work?”

“No, only at home really.”

“Is there anything that usually leads to you getting angry?” 

“My partner can be very trying.”

“You’re seeing someone?”

I shut my eyes for a moment, I didn’t want to get into this so soon. “Yes, there is someone new in my life, well not new, we have known each other for ages, it’s just the relationship that is new.”

“Ok, that’s good, tell me the specific things that get to you then?”

I pause to consider this. “I don’t know really, I guess being ignored. That is what set me off yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday?”

“I asked him to bring Rosie in. That’s my little girl; she was crying. I don’t think he heard me, I’m not sure, I think he was distracted or maybe he was just being obtuse, he does that sometimes. I ended up shouting. I dropped a mug and it broke. It was an accident. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but he got a fright. A bad fright… I think he thought I was going to hit him. He totally shut down. I can’t do that to him again.” I sigh, knowing that I am not explaining any of this right”

“Did you talk about it afterwards? When you had both calmed down.”

“Yes, I apologised, told him I would get help, I promised it would never happen again. I need to keep that promise.”

“Have two argued in the past?”

“Yeah,” it hurts to admit this, “we have. He is not an easy person to get along with, he is even less easy to live with. We have known each other for ages. I recently moved back in after living apart for a few of years.” 

“So, you lived together in the past, but the relationship is new, is that right?” Janette asks. I can see that she is baffled by my life. Why wouldn’t she be, I’m baffled by it most of the time. 

“Yes, that is a very recent development. We were just friends before that. We just shared an apartment. There has always been a chemistry between us, but I never considered that I might be interested in another man, and he was always adamant that he didn’t do relationships. Basically, we both thought the other wasn’t interested. He was injured recently, I moved back in to help out, it has turned into a permanent arrangement.” I can feel my skin prickle with heat as I talk. Janette just nods as if this is the most normal thing she has ever heard. She must hear some messed-up stuff if this all seems normal to her. 

“But you say that he is difficult to live with?”

“He is, he keeps unsociable hours, has no concept of privacy, has no verbal filter. He lives at a million kilometres an hour or doesn’t get off the sofa for days. Living with him is madness.”

“We often find ourselves falling for people who are not easy to be with.” She says with a kind smile. “Have you argued in the past or is this something new.”

“We have argued before.”

“Often?”

“Yes, um, no, sporadically. Mostly be have been good friends.”

“What are some of the things you have argued about?”

“Sometimes it’s just the usual bickering that people do, um, sometimes he can be quite inconsiderate of other people’s feelings. He has lied to me, we fought about that.” I can’t talk about how Mary died right now. 

“Have the arguments ever become physical?”

“Yes.” My throat feels like it will lock up.

“How often?”

“On two,” I pause, realising the truth, shut my eyes, “no, three occasions.” 

“Did you both engage in these fights?”

“No, he didn’t. He just let it happen. I think that he thinks he deserved it. Thing is, he could, he is a black belt in judo or something, and a practiced boxer, he could wipe the floor with me, but he just let me hit him.”

“Did you harm him when you have fought?”

“Oh god, I know how bad this is going to sound.” I said with my heart in my gut. “The last one; I put him in hospital. Can I explain a bit?”

“Please.”

“There was a lot that led up to it. It was pretty soon after my wife had died, I was, I was grieving, I guess, and I blamed him for what happened. I hadn’t seen him for months; I needed the space. Then he just barged back into my life and dragged me into his chaos. He was high, not at all himself, he attacked someone else, I intervened. I took it too far. I know I did, but I had to stop him.”

I pause. Clear my throat. 

“I’m aware of how this sounds. You must think I am a terrible person. A terrible parent. It’s not normally like that. He is clean now, he isn’t dangerous, he is really a wonderful person. He’s never done anything to threaten anyone innocent. It was an isolated incident.”

“I need to ask this, John, I want you to be honest with me.” 

I nod.

“Do you think there is a chance you might repeat what happened?”

“No, no, I won’t, I can’t let anything like that ever happen again.” Especially after what he has told me about Serbia. “I don’t even want to shout again. I want to do better. I feel awful about it. That’s why I’m here.”

“Again, I just need to ask. This is not an accusation. Do you ever worry that you might harm your daughter?”

“No, it’s not like that. I know everyone must say that, but I wouldn’t.” 

“And your partner, you mentioned drug use…”

I know where she is going with this, it’s hard not to be defensive. “He is clean now, has been since then. He’s great with Rosie. He works with the police; he isn’t some junkie.”

“I just need to know that she is safe.” Janette says, “I have to ask this too, were you ever violent with your wife?”

“No, we had our issues but nothing like that.”

“Good. I just want to recap a little bit to make sure I’m clear on all this. Please correct me if I have misunderstood anything. You have come in because you had an argument with your partner. You have had a history of arguing and fighting with him. One of your fights was serious enough to put your friend in hospital. You are aware of how serious this behaviour is, and it is something you feel guilty about. I can tell that. I can also see that you have had a lot of stressors in your life recently; a new relationship, working through issues with your sexuality, you have moved house, you have a young daughter and you mentioned that your wife passed away. Have I missed anything?” 

“My partner, he told me, I don’t think it is fair to go into details, but he recently told me that he has been through something really terrible. It’s done him a lot of damage. I think that has been weighing on me too.” My voice shakes as I say this. 

“All those things are adding to the pressure your under. It is a lot for anyone to take on, but I do hear a tendency for you to place blame for your actions with others. Do you think that is fair?” Janette asks gently. My heart is heavy. Hearing it laid out like that makes me realise what a mess I have made of my life. I have no idea how Sherlock can forgive me the things I have done to him. I scrub at my face with my hands. They come away damp. I nod, not trusting my voice. Janette continues, “but you want to make some positive changes in your life to assure that it doesn’t happen again.” 

I nod again. I swipe angrily at the tears on my face.

“Now, let’s make a plan, you mentioned you’d like to be better at regulating you anger, is that right?”

“Yes, I think that would be helpful.” 

“So, what coping strategies do you use now when you feel angry?”

“Sometimes I go for a walk.” I say doubtfully.

She smiles at me. “Walking is a great strategy; do you find it helpful?”

“Sometimes, if I am able to go. With a three-year-old, it’s not always possible.” 

“Could you take her with you?”

“Yeah, I guess. It would be a nice way to spend some time with her.”

“Good, start with that. First sign of any anger and I want you to choof off for a stroll.” She says with a smile. “We have a lot to work on, John, if you are willing I want to see you once a week so that we can work through some of the things that are bothering you and so that we can make a plan for how you are going to deal with challenges in the future. Does that sound acceptable.”

“Yes, that sounds good. I’d like that.”

“John, I can tell you are very committed to this; you are clearly a capable person. The changes you need to make in order to be able to manage your anger are relatively small ones but they will have a huge impact on your life. You can do this.” 

She sends me home with a wad educational of papers to read, a business card with our next appointment time, and a sense of hope.

I get home around eight. It has been a long day and I feel completely rung out. Sherlock is asleep on the couch. I have never seen him sleep so much; the concussion is still healing. I know from experience how tired it can make you feel. I slept for a month when I got brained playing rugby in the under sixteens. I’m so emotionally exhausted I feel like I could sleep for a month now. 

I check the fridge and find that Mrs Hudson has left us a plate each. That woman deserves a medal. I heat up the casserole. The soft fluffy dumplings are one of my favourites and it smells divine. 

Sherlock comes into the kitchen as I am microwaving the second plate. He slumps down at the table with a groan. 

“Did you catch him?” I ask. 

“No one to catch, simple workplace accident. Dull.” He says with a shrug. 

I turn to shove the plate in front of him. He is flipping through the paperwork that I deposited on the table as I come in. 

Realising what it is, he looks up at me, dropping the pages. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have.”

“No, it’s fine.” I say, sitting across from him. “Go ahead.”

Sherlock reads through the pages quietly as he eats. When he closes the last page, he looks up at me and says, “Thank you, John.”

Over the next few weeks, I discuss everything with Janette. My inability to process anger and hurt, Mary’s death, her lies and betrayal, the difficulties of raising Rosie without her, Harry’s drinking, my premature and forced discharge from the army, Sherlock’s lies and the grief they caused me, what happened to him and how I can support him, and the big one; our relationship. And everything that comes with it, but mostly my inhibitions. Despite the rumours and innuendos of nearly everybody, I really did think that I was immune to Sherlock’s charm, based on nothing more than his gender. How wrong I was. It is good to discuss it with someone impartial, Janette listens without judgement and helps me to sort through my emotions. She helps me to realise that love is often not convenient. She helps me to find the courage I need to admit to myself that I need to let go of some of my preconceived ideas about who and what I am. She helps me admit that I need to stop thinking so much and let myself feel things; allow myself to feel hurt and scared and sad and abandoned and let down. 

She helps me realise when I begin to feel angry and she helps me work out strategies for dealing with that anger. Slowly I find that one of my old favourites works best. When I start to feel the tension in my jaw, I do the breathing exercises. If that doesn’t work and the tightness in my shoulders starts, I take a walk. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Rosie. 

One day, around the time I unpack the last of my boxes Sherlock asks if he can come along. We walk the streets and parks of London and he points out all the things that I don’t notice. It is like the first days of our friendship again. I feel the wonder and awe in his abilities in a way that I had almost forgotten. This becomes our daily habit and it has become my favourite part of the day. 

It is while we are walking that I realise that I want to spend the rest of my life with Sherlock trying to make up for the time we have lost and the hurt we have caused each other.


	24. The Crisis. Sherlock Holmes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another one that I edited quite a lot, so all the mistakes are mine. 
> 
> This one gets a bit heavy so brace yourselves. 
> 
> It's coming towards the end and I am already feeling conflicted about that. Thanks for taking this journey with me. I'll miss this when it's over.

I wake up heaving like a racehorse. Teeth clenched. Muscles clenched. Fists clenched. John mumbles something; reaches out to me. His hand ghosts across the scars Mary gifted me. I push his hand away, but keep it gripped tightly in mine.

“Don’t touch me.” I gasp out. “Give me a minute.” 

The dream is still too closed tight around me. 

“You want to tell me about it.” John asks softly squeezing my hand. I try to regulate my breathing as I consider whether telling him will help or hurt.

“The Nightman. Except it was his father. And the lights were on. It wasn’t Mycroft watching this time. It was you.” The anguish is still with me. My skin prickles the heat. 

John’s reply is a whisper. “You know I would never...”

“Don’t be stupid. It was just a dream. I don’t believe any of the things my brain cooks up to torment me.” It doesn’t stop them from feeling real though. I should be used to this by now. 

“You trust me though?” John asks with such doubt that I am horrified.

“Of course. Of course, I do.” I roll to face him. I bury my face in his chest. Listen to his breathing. I tuck my foot between his calves in an effort to get closer. He pulls me in and holds me there. His steady comfort lets me calm down and eventually drift back to sleep.

Natural light wakes me next time. It is pleasant to sleep this late. I almost never do. John is still beside me. Must be Sunday. He only sleeps late on Sundays; so conventional in his habits.

John is snoring softly against my shoulder his arm draped across my belly. This is still relatively new, us sleeping together. I don’t really know how to navigate it. I have an erection.

So does he. I can feel it against my leg.

Our sexual encounters have been limited. And they have had varying degrees of success. We are like two fumbling teenagers who don’t know what they are doing. Mostly, I cannot calm the chaos in my mind and have to stop. Then, I find myself frustrated at my lack of control. John is excellent and always gives me the space that I need, but I can tell he is frustrated that he doesn’t know how to help me through it. Surely, he must be sexually frustrated as well. 

It has been awkward as we both feel our way through our own personal challenges. I know John struggles with the challenges of navigating a male body rather than a female one and everything that that means. I can tell it still makes him feel a little strange. I struggle with the tendrils of guilt and shame that intertwine with sexual arousal. If anything, they get even worse in the wake of sexual climax. Something I suspect will continue to haunt me for a long time to come. John is patient and considerate; always puts the breaks on whenever I need a moment and I never feel any pressure from him to do more than I am comfortable with. If anything, he slows me down when I push too hard the boundaries that I wish I did not have. 

Sometimes I can stay in the moment long enough to catalogue some of the things he likes, where he is most sensitive, how he best likes to be touched, the pace. He enjoys sex and I feel some envy for that. Even when my mind is under control, often my body loses interest but a couple of times, I have been able to let go enough to come to completion. I should consider those times a success, I guess but even then, I am left with an emptiness I cannot explain. A lingering guilt that has no equitable foundation. Despite all this; I want a relationship with John that includes intimacy, it’s just that nearly everything reminds me of what happened. Even the simple fumbling hand jobs that have been the extent of our sexual bravery. 

John must feel my tension up because he stirs too.

“Morning.” He mumbles into my shoulder.

“Morning.” I reply. Unable to think of anything intelligent to say. My voice sounds tight.

“You ok? He asks. Looking at me. Scrutinising me. “Bad dream?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just that we appear to have a collective morning condition.”

John lifts the blanket and peeks beneath it. He chuckles softly. That helps me to relax a bit.

He props himself up on an elbow. Looks at me seriously. When he speaks, I hear self-doubt and fear and a tinge of cheeky hope. “Do you want me to, you know?”

I look at the ceiling. Unable to meet his eye. 

“I’m not sure. I don’t know how I will react. I want us to but... last time…” What remains unsaid is how I had pushed him away and sat naked on the edge of the bed having a minor panic attack. 

“However you react, it’s fine. We can stop any time. Just don’t wait so long before you ask me to stop, tell me as soon as you are uncomfortable.”

He absently runs his fingers in circles on my waist. It feels nice. I want more. But I feel so self-conscious. I’m so sick of being a coward though.

I turn towards him. I kiss him. This we have done often enough that it feels, well not entirely familiar, but not foreign either. 

Eyes shut I search for the hem of his nightshirt. The distraction of his mouth freeing my hands to move.

His skin feels warm against my fingertips. I fight to keep myself in the moment. His hand pushes up my t-shirt as he traces ribs and scars with a delicate touch. I feel a pleasant ripple beneath my skin. My cock yearns to be touched in a way I thought it had forgotten.

I gasp as he pinches my nipple and rolls it between his thumb and finger. I feel him smile against my mouth.

He is thoroughly too smug. I undo the top few buttons on his shirt and lean in to take his nipple between my teeth. Lick at it with the tip of my tongue while I hold it in place with my teeth. He moans softly. This is my favourite way to see him. It is worth the stress of intimacy to see him like this.

The surprise of the heat and pressure of his palm along my clothed cock make me arch my back. I accept that this reminds of the Nightman’s touch, but I ground myself in the sight of Johns flushed face and his pleasant scent. 

He gently pushes me on to my back. He lowers my pants until they are down my thighs. I lift my hips to help him. I suck in a breath as my erection is freed from the confines of my pants. He rubs both his hot palms up my thighs and encircles my erection. His touch is electric. His movements practiced but so different from my own. I am paralysed by pleasure and by other emotions that I push away.

“This ok?” He asks. 

I nod. I can’t do words. Scared they will break the spell.

He shuffles closer. Straddles my thighs.

“Still ok?”

I nod again, smiling. I need him to lead, to take the initiative, I can’t do it. I am too locked up in my fear of my past and apprehension about the moment to do much more than be guided through this. 

I am surprised how secure I feel beneath him as if under the protection of a weighted blanket. He works his pants down too. His cock springs free and bobs up against his belly. He gently guides my hand towards him. He groans as I cup his balls, rolling them. Emboldened by my own arousal. 

The scent of sex meets my nostrils. A breath shudders out of me. I tense. John notices. I grip his shirt.

“Stay with me, Sherlock. Your safe here. I’ve got you.”

I look up at him in wonder. No one else would put up with this. 

He watches me so carefully, waiting for me to break down. His scrutiny is almost too much. I pull him down by his open shirt and he bends to kiss me. Our cocks brush against one another for the first time. Soft skin over hard heat. I roll my hips. The movement involuntary. “I’m alright.”

He puts his hand around us both and moves slowly. Squeezing and rubbing at all the right moments, places. His hips thrust in time with his hand. I put one hand on each of his hips. And I push up into his grip. His hand moves faster. The slide is slick with pre come and sweat. 

It feels incredible. He feels incredible. But the worry that I will panic hovers over me.

He brings me undone with his touch and his heat and his passion. When he tips his head back and tenses. The look of ecstasy on his face makes me follow his climax. 

He strokes my cheek with is clean hand. I cannot answer the questioning look on his face right now. I shudder runs through me, then another. My skin is overheated and prickly, but I feel icy to the core. The smells of sex surround me.

I can hear John talking but he sounds far away, and the words don’t have any meaning. I will my brain to come back online. Then John is gone. I roll on my side, still shivering, and curl up in a ball. 

John comes back, he takes my shirt off and wipes me clean with a warm cloth. Then hold me tight against his chest while I lose my mind in swathes of guilt and shame that don’t belong to this moment. 

When I stop shaking and start thinking again, he asks me what happened. 

“I don’t know. I just… I don’t know.”

“We don’t need to, not ever. It doesn’t matter to me. Not enough to make you go through that.”

“No. It was good. I will get used to it. I will be able to control this. I just need time.”

“I don’t think it is a good idea.”

“I used to freak out more than that when I had a shower or brushed my teeth. I didn’t stop doing those things. They got better.”

“How can I make it better?”

“You can’t. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and I will work out the rest.” 

I draw his hand closer to my chest and hold it there, as I shiver through the crisis.


	25. Sold.  John Watson.

My alarm goes off for the early shift and I reach out to silence it quickly. Sherlock had been up until all hours composing something haunting and now that he is finally asleep, I don’t want to wake him.

I doze for the ten-minute reprieve that the snooze button allows me. Warm and comfortable.

When the alarm sounds again Sherlock groans dramatically. “You should quit.”

“I can’t. I own the place.” I say dryly. I really don’t want to get up either.

“Sell it. Sell it so we can sleep in every day and take all the cases we want.” Sherlock says into the pillow.

I don’t bother to remind him that it is usually the cases that make us get up early.

“Nice idea,” I say, rubbing his back, “but I can hardly afford to be out of a job.”

“Cases are jobs. They pay alright.” 

“You don’t even charge for most of them.” I scoff. I get up and pull my dressing gown on. The floor is freezing against my feet.

“We have plenty of money”. He mumbles, and I envy his ability to stay in bed.

“Really?” I ask surprised. No so much surprised that he has plenty of money as surprised that he thinks of it as mine too. But, not for the first time, I wonder just how much money he really does have hidden away.

“Yeah, loads.” He says, and I laugh, I never know when to take him seriously.

“You want coffee?” 

“Nar. Too early. I’m going back to sleep.” He dismisses me with a wave of his arm, and I dismiss the idea of quitting just as easily. But it drifts back to me throughout the day. With every patient who wants a medical certificate to explain a work absence because their boss is too much of a prick to take their word for it, or because they got drunk last night, I am more bored. That has me drifting in the imagination of a better life. One where I don’t have to get up to the same droll routine. I wonder again just how much money Sherlock has stashed away. It would be nice to spend more time with Rosie and less time with paperwork and rosters and inventories and haemorrhoids. 

Selling up sounds appealing, but I suspect it is nothing more than Sherlock’s sleepy ramblings. 

It is completely forgotten by the end of the week. We get called in to assist with a locked room mystery that features a dead prisoner in one of the Scotland Yard cells. The man, clearly an idiot, breached his parole and every law and moral by trying to buy a chunk of ivory. Then he got caught because he bragged about it on his Facebook page. 

Despite all the cameras and checks he died in his cell without anyone noticing for over half an hour. 

Sherlock solves it within ten minutes of walking into the room, but it takes him three days to find the person who sold the ivory. 

It’s that night at around one am, we are forced to make a visit to my surgery. 

“You’re lucky she missed your eye.” I tell Sherlock, referring to where Constable Jane Boden’s engagement ring has gouged out a deep furrow just above his eyebrow. 

I didn’t see what had led up to the incident, but I did see it happen. I had left to use the loo and I came back into the main office area at the yard to hear Sherlock destroying Jane with his familiar deductive tone. 

“You should try going home to your fiancé at night rather than staying at the Radisson. Radisson is expensive, isn’t it? That’s ok though, your chubby lawyer friend pays for it, doesn’t he? Met him on a case is my guess. How long until hubby finds out? Before or after the big day?” Sherlock had been snarling at her as I walked into the room.

It was at that point that she had punched him in the face. Greg had dragged her away and I had pushed Sherlock out of the room. 

Frustration burns like a bad itch. I am getting better at controlling it now, channelling it and not letting it overcome me, but Jesus, Sherlock tests me some days. Part of controlling it is not letting it build up. So, I blurt out, “you could try to be a bit nicer to the new ones, if Greg ever retires, they will be the ones we are stuck working with.”

“No.” He says with finality. “I won’t be working with her.”

I don’t know why he is being so snooty about this one in particular. 

“You cannot afford another concussion right now. You’re still recovering from the last one.” He rolls his eyes and I tell him to stay still. “Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to stir her up?”

“She started it.” He tells me like a petulant child. By the time Rosie gets to this phase I should be an expert. Or I’ll have two of them to deal with. I sigh and inject the anaesthetic into his brow as gently as I can.

“It doesn’t matter who started it; I heard what you said, and it was uncalled for. Stay out of other people’s relationships.”

“That’s very hypocritical.” He snaps.

“Alright then, what the hell did she say to deserve it?” I ask.

“She said ‘the little one is quite good looking; I’d have a crack at him myself if he wasn’t so busy bumming the freak.’ Even Donovan had the respect to look guilty.” He voice is bitter and flat as he tells me.

“Oh.” I say guiltily. “I didn’t realise.”

“Yes, well, how often do I have to tell you not to make a judgement without all the information?” He scolds, but there is an undertone of amusement in his voice now. 

“On the balance, I think you were actually pretty nice to her, I might have said worse.” 

“She was right about one thing though.” Sherlock says.

“Hmm, what’s that?” I ask.

“You are quite good looking.” 

I cannot help but to smile a little as I ask playfully, “just quite, is that all? Not very good looking or incredibly good looking or…” 

“Careful, or I’ll point out the other thing she was right about.”

“Don’t you dare.” I start to chuckle. “Leave my height out of this.”

“I never said a word.” He says with fake innocence that is completely undermined by his ridiculous grin. 

“Is she really cheating on her fiancé?”

“Oh yeah, and I think you should admire my discretion at declining to mention that her lawyer friend likes to wear her frilly undies.”

I am laughing outright now, and I have to put down the suture kit. “How could you possibly know that?”

“How else could her pants get so stretched? All day she was pulling them back up. The elastic must be shot.” 

“You mean he really is chubby? I thought you were just being mean.”

“Never. Just observant.”

Another fit of laughter makes me pause again. At least the anaesthetic has really kicked in by the time I am composed enough to work. Sherlock allows me to concentrate, lying back and shutting his eyes. I don’t want him to have any more scars so I take my time and do the finest stitches I can manage. 

I am just tying off the last one when he speaks again. It surprises me; I thought he had dozed off. 

“So, are you going to sell up?”

“Sell what?”

“All this.”

“You were serious about that?” 

“Yes.” He says, opening one eye and giving me a look that says, ‘why wouldn’t I be?”

By the end of the next week the surgery has a healthy offer made on it. By Christmas it is all settled, and I am free to spend my days as I please with Rosie and Sherlock.


	26. The Epilogue.  Sherlock Holmes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so this is where is ends. 
> 
> If you are over at HolmesCon 2020 this weekend, say hello and thank you to Sandra. Without her this story would never have happened, both because she prompted me to write it and because without her it would have been an unreadable mess. 
> 
> Thank you all for taking this journey with me. You have given me great joy.

The best years are the ones after I talk John into selling his practice. Well, he advertised it, and I bought it. Not that he knew that at the time. I was a good choice, it provides us a modest income and if he ever grows tired of being my blogger, he can go back to it. 

But as time passes the thrill of solving cases diminishes. Criminals become boring as their inability to do anything at all original seems to increase exponentially with every year. The cases I would have once classed as a seven or even an eight, now fail to raise my heart rate. Private clients still provide occasional thrills and Mycroft sends me something titillating every now and again. Like that little exercise in America that ate up two years of our time, but mostly I am not as enthralled by the work as I used to be.

When I get a letter in the mail informing me that I am to inherit a house in Surrey, with the only condition of the inheritance stating that the bees must be cared for, I cannot think of any way I would rather spend the rest of my time on this earth. Rosie, now seventeen, requests a horse, since we would have the space to keep one. John sees no objection to moving. He had freaked out a week earlier when Rosie had a friend come home with her. He was a harmless chap, but John couldn’t see past his nose piercing and leather jacket. John states that a private practice in a small town might suit him, but I suspect he really wants to move Rosie away from the city and all the temptations that come with it. 

All in all, it doesn’t take long for us to decide to move. We had never told Janine about our change in relationship status; not a deliberate oversite, she had just slipped out of our lives after Mary had passed away. I had not even known she was ill. I certainly hadn’t known that I was included in her final will. But I suspect she would have been pleased to know that John and Rosie come with me when I move in. 

Our life is simple and comfortable there. The fresh air agrees with my failing lungs in a way that the London smog could not.

We get great joy at watching Rosie gallop across the fields, and sometimes on the warm days, I even trot down the lanes with her on the old city carriage horse that we adopted to keep her thoroughbred company. 

John looks out for the town’s folk by doing house calls. He is usually home by lunchtime. He is writing a book in his spare time, but he won’t let me read any of it just yet.

Of course, we have kept the rooms at Baker Street; it is far too valuable to have access to convenient lodging in London. Plus, it will be perfect for Rosie next year. She has plans to study medicine at UCL next year, it should only take her a few minutes to walk there from Baker Street. I have a strong suspicion that rather than following in John’s footsteps, she will pursue Molly’s. She has been like a surrogate mother to Rosie since the earliest days after Mary’s death. Now they are even closer still, acting more like best friends than mother and daughter. It is not unusual for Molly to travel out here so that they can spend hours shopping or going out to movies together. Inevitably, they end up back at the cottage for dinner. Usually, bringing with them a ridiculous dessert of some sort or another. 

John and I are happy and content here. We still bicker sometimes. During our most mild winter to date, I spend a night watching the hives. A small number of Acherontia Atropos have finally come to our hives to steal some honey from the bees. I had planted a whole field of potatoes in hope of encouraging them to reproduce here. The five beautifully marked individuals that flutter into and out of hive number four are enough to keep me riveted in place all night. I jot notes in my book about their exact descriptions, how frequently they come and go, how long they spend inside the hive and what time they leave.

When I come into the cottage just after sunrise the next morning shivering and coughing, John is furious and berates me for my foolishness. 

“John, you should have seen them. Perfect specimens. Five of them. Bright yellow bands, perfectly marked.”

“I don’t care about you bloody Hannibal moths. Look at the state of you.” John says with exasperation. 

“They don’t have anything to do with Hannibal, or that movie. It was stupid anyway; in the book it was Erebus odora pupae. They only changed it in the movie to be flashy. Dumb. You should have seen them, John. They are the perfect burglars. It is the perfect crime. They release pheromones so that they are undetectable, the bees had no idea. They can steal all the honey they like. They are magnificent.”

“Bloody hell.” John says as he comes at me with the blanket snatches off the back of the couch. “Your teeth are chattering.”

I hold the open notebook out towards him, showing him the notes. He is not at all interested in any of my scribbles about the moths. He can, however, be convinced to take a bath with me, so all is not lost. Once I am warm again, with him reclining against my chest, I even manage to short circuit another lecture on the dangers of having another bout of pneumonia. All it takes to distract him is a writhing, leg shaking climax that I create for him with slow strokes of my slippery hands. He offers to reciprocate but my enjoyment really lies in witnessing his own. Now that he is quiet and satisfied, the warmth of the steamy room is making me dozy. I suggest that I might nap for a while; being up all night has done me in.

Just like we do on most afternoons, we take a walk down to the ocean. On weekends and school holidays Rosie brings Silver Blaze out and they pop over the stone walls as John and I walk hand in hand along the farm tracks that lead to the beach.

Today we are alone though. The wind is strong and the sky a steel grey and it is threatening to rain by the time we reach the rise, where we can stand catching our breath from the walk. 

Looking out at the sea. Watching the foaming white waves roll in. With the cold wind in my face and John’s hand warm within my own. This is where I am at my most content. Knowing that all the sacrifices I have made are all worth it. I am able to recognise the gifts I have been given. So many second chances. The chance to watch Rosie blossom into a strong capable young lady. So many thrilling chases. So many good friends. But the biggest, grandest gift of all is that I am loved by the man that I love more than anything in this world.


End file.
